The Cost of Christian 
Conquest 

WILLIAM K, BEEWSTEB 







COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 



THE COST OF CHRISTIAN 
CONQUEST 



THE COST OF CHRIS- 
TIAN CONQUEST 



By 
WILLIAM N BREWSTER 

A Missionary to the Chinese 

Author of "The Evolution 

of New China " 



^ 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GEAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 






Two Copies Hecf^.^*^y».'i 

MAR 7 S3)08 






j^Xg. i<gu 



C0PYRI<3^HT, 1908, 

By Jennings and Graham 



TO MY MOTHER, 

Whose lifelong devotion to the 
cause of Christian Missions, 
and whose Christlihe life and 
teachings have been so large a 
factor in molding the life and 
work of her missionary son. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



FOEEWOED. 

Pags 

The Why of this Booklet, - - - - 11 

TAe Crisis of the Ages, - - - - 11 

Why Only Methodist Episcopal? - - - 12 

Authorities, ------- 13 

Title, --------- 1.3 

Not a '' Last Word,'' - . - . - 15 

Chapter I. 

DEFINITION. 

The Crucial Question, ----- 19 

Definition of " Evangelize, '^ - - - 20 

The Great Commission, - - - - - 23 

Chapter II. 

PEIITCIPLES OF CHEISTIAN HOETI- 
CULTUEE. 

The Fundamental Problem, - - - - 25 

Original Method, - 27 

Foreign Leaders Temporary, - - - - 29 

7 



Contents 

Pagh 

Dk. Sheffield's Statement, - - - 31 

Effect Upon Cost of Work, - - - - 34 

The Wider Evangel, ----- 38 

Social Kedemption, ------ 41 

The Problem Simplified, - - - - 44 



Chaptee III. 

PRINOIPLES APPLIED, 

Why a Specimen Analysis, - - - - 47 

I. A Typical Corner of the Vineyard, - 48 

II. The Husbandmen, 51 

How Many Missionaries? - - - 53 

Gradual Eb-enforcembnt Desirable, - 55 

Cost of Missionaries, - - - - 57 

HI. The VixNes, - - 60 

Is the Eate Excessive? - - - 61 
One Hundred and Fifty Eecrlits 

Per Annum, - - - - - 63 

IV. The Nursery, 64 

Nine Hundred '^ Theologues,^' - - 66 

Eaw Material, ----- 69 

Cost of Theological Training, - - 70 

Colleges, .,---- 71 

Cost of Colleges, ----- 76 

Academies, 77 

Female Education, - - - - - 79 

Elementary Education, - - - 80 
8 



Contents 

Page 

V. Evangelistic Work, - - - - - 81 

Self- Support in Swatow, - - - 82 

Self-Support in Fukien, - - - - 83 

New Work Requires Aid, - - - 85 

Church Extension, ----- 87 

Bible -Women, ------ 87 

Total Apparently Too Small, - - - 88 

Adjustment to Various Fields, - - 89 

YI. Works of Mercy, - - - - - 90 

VII. Literature, ----->- 92 

Resume, ___.-«.- 93 

Comparison AVith Present, - - - 93 



Chapter IY. 
A WIDEE APPLICATION, 

The Unit of Calculation, - - - - 95 

A Remarkable Agreement, - - - - 96 

Methodist Episcopal Responsibility in 

China, -- 97 

North China, ------ 97 

Central China, ------ 98 

West China, ------ 99 

Summary, - - - - - = - 100 

Presbyterian Estimate, _ - » - 100 

The Cost for Our China Field, =. - - 102 

9 



Contents 

Chapter. V. 
WORLD=WIDE APPLICATION. 

Pa&e 
One Shall Chase— How Many? - - - 105 
The Money Cost, ------ 108 

The Heaviest Cost, ----«- 108 

Chapiee VI. 

^MVE CAN DO IT, IF WE WILL.'' 

Two Important Principles, - - - - 112 

Current Expenses, . _ _ - _ 112 

'' Beginning at Jerusalem/' - - - - 114 

Probable Increase of Membership in 

Decade, - - - - ^ - - 116 

Income BY Families, ------ 117 

Per Capita Gifts, - - . - - - 119 

Chapter VII. 
HOW? 

Not '' Can We ? '' but '' Will We? '' = - 122 

Necessity for a New Ideal, - „ - 124 

A Eeasonable Ideal for Stewardship, = - 126 
The Scattering that Increaseth, - - 129 

Is IT Worth the Cost ?----- 131 
10 



FOREWORD 



The occasion for this pamphlet is the 

question which leading laymen of all Protes- 

r^^ Txr,_ tant Churches are asking^: "What 
The Why ^ 

of this will it cost in men and money to 
evangelize the world in this genera- 
tion?" Presumably, many missionaries will 
be moved to answer the inquiry from their 
several points of view. No problem of Church 
or State is of more vital importance to the 
world to-day. From the multiplicity of re- 
plies students of the science of missions and 
leaders of the missionary movement may be 
able to formulate a fairly accurate estimate 
of the probable cost of the Christian con- 
quest of the world. 

The writer believes that this is the Crisis 
- of the Ages in the Christian propa- 

Crisis of ganda. It may be that no previous 
the ^^?es 

generation could have evangelized 

the whole world. A generation ago the 
11 



Foreword 

political and social barriers in China, the 
physical difficulties in Africa, the fanaticism 
in Turkey, the caste system in India, all 
seemed to be immovable. They are not so 
to-day. The social elements are rapidly com- 
ing into a state of solution in all these non- 
Christian lands. Let them again become 
crystallized without taking on Christianity, 
and the labor and cost of evangelization will 
be multiplied many fold, if, indeed, it does 
not become impossible. If these hoary sys- 
tems are to be superseded by a Christian 
civilization, the Churches must act wisely, 
zealously, and immediately. 

No apology is offered for confining our in- 
quiry and replies to the Methodist Episcopal 

---- Church. Indeed it would seem to 

Why 

only be rank presumption for the writer 
ist Epis- t^ offer to other Churches any sug- 
copal ? gestions as to their m^easure of re- 
sponsibility and how to meet it. However, 
what value these data may have for them is 
by no means discounted by our failure to 
apply them to all Protestant communions, 
12 



Foreword 

and it Is hoped that the Knes here laid down 
may be of use to the leaders of other bodies 
in estimating their reasonable share in the 
world's speedy evangelization. 

These pages have been written in the in- 
terior of China, with no large library to 
Author- draw upon, and in a few cases 

ities without the latest data in statistics 
for a basis of calculation ; but allowance has 
been made for the lapse of time, and the con- 
clusions, it is believed, would not be changed 
essentially by the most recent figures. Au- 
thorities are cited in foot-notes, or in the 
body of the text, so that no reference need 
be made to them here. Unless otherwise 
stated, all sums of money are given in United 
States or American currency. 

'"The Cost of Christian Conquest'' is ap- 
parently a more belligerent caption than har- 
monizes with the treatment as indi- 
cated m the chapter headings and 
subdivisions. "The weapons of our warfare 
are not carnal," and the writer has no sym- 
pathy with that type of figure of speech that 
13 



Foreword 

depicts the Christian hosts as an army with 
banners making an onslaught upon the be- 
sieged fortress of heathenism. In these days 
of Peace Conferences even in the poHtical 
world, the Christian writer would better em- 
ploy imagery that more nearly harmonizes 
with the life and work of Him whom the 
angels heralded as the Prince of Peace. 
Rather let us regard the non-Christian world 
as a wilderness, dark and forbidding, over- 
grown with poisonous vines and plants that 
shut out God's sunlight and stars. Our 
"conquest" is that of the pioneer of the pri- 
meval forest who comes with ax and hoe, 
spade and plow, bearing precious seed, to 
conquer wild, untamed nature, and make the 
wilderness blossom as the rose. 

The writer does not offer the following 
estimates as a final budget. No calculation 
for building this spiritual temple is possible, 
such as the architect may make for erecting a 
material edifice. The divine element must be 
always a factor that can not be fixed as we 
quote the price of yesterday's stocks. Who 
14 



Foreword 

can put a commercial valuation for mankind 
upon the "widow's mite?" Who would at- 
j^Q^ ^ tempt to balance the ledger account 
**Last to which is charsced the meae^er trav- 
upon the eling expenses of the journey on 
^^^ foot through the Ohio forests, a 
century ago. of the unlettered negro local 
preacher, John Stewart, which resulted in 
the evangelization of the Wyandot Indians, 
and the organization of the Missionary So- 
ciety of the Methodist Episcopal Church? 
However, there are certain factors of the 
work of foreign missions which a century of 
effort has shown to be tolerably constant. 
The writer has sought counsel from mission- 
aries in other provinces, as well as of his 
Fukien colleagues. The combined experience 
of these missionaries has been crystallized into 
a calculation which we hope may not be a 
very incorrect guide in the proposed forward 
movement for missions. If the conclusions 
are erroneous, none would be more pleased 
than the writer to have the mistakes pointed 
out and corrected. If this book will only 
15 



Foreword 

provoke other more competent students of the 
missionary problem to make clear his blunders 
and give to the waiting Churches the correct 
estimate for which they are seeking, the labor 
upon these few pages will have been repaid 
many fold. 

William N. Brewster, 

Hinghua, 
Fukien Province, 
September, 1907. China. 



1« 



THE COST OF CHRISTIAN 
CONQUEST 



Chapter I. 

DEFINITION. 

The news of the Laymen's Missionary 
Movement in America has startled the Chris- 
-, tian Church in every land. The 

Crucial men who "can do it if they will," 
have said : "We can do it and we 
will." These hard-headed, practical, busi- 
ness men have asked the managers of mis- 
sionary boards to make an estimate of what 
a campaign of conquest of the non-Christian 
world will cost. They do not call for calcula- 
tions according to our little faith as to what 
we think the Church is likely to do. They 
have been having budgets upon that basis for 
several decades already. What they want to 
know is: "How much will it cost in men and 
money to evangelize the Christless nations of 
19 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the earth in the present generation?'' That 
isj during the next thirty-three years, or by 
the year nineteen hundred and forty. That 
is certainly a fair proposition, — one to which 
the home constituency has a right to expect 
from its representatives upon the field a fairly 
definite answer. Modern missionary opera- 
tions have extended over a century. Data are 
available from which it should be possible to 
make a tolerably accurate estimate of the 
probable results of future outlay. 

' The term "evangelize" has been much 

abused by its friends. Twenty years ago it 

was very commonly used to describe 

tion of the work of swiftly going from 

^7^^7 place to place, or from house to 
gelize " J^ ... 

house, in a region hitherto unvisited 
by any messenger of Christ, and proclaiming 
at least once "the Gospel of John, three, six- 
teen," and then passing on to another such 
region, never returning to the same place 
twice, if any new field were available. But 
a deeper study of the Word, as^ well as 
greater experience in the work of evangeliza- 
20 



Definition 

tion, has taught us valuable lessons. The 
common dictionary meaning of the word is 
the sense in which it is used most generally 
now. The "Standard Dictionary" gives two 
meanings. "1. To instruct in the gospel. 
2. To pervade with the spirit of the gospel." 
According to this authoritative definition, to 
evangelize the Christless nations the Chris- 
tians of the world must "instruct in the gos- 
pel" at least one billion of pagan people for 
whom Christ died. "Instruction," even in the 
simplest truths, can not be given by one brief 
statement. Instruction carries with it the 
idea of making the truth clear to the pupil. 
To evangelize the nations, then, there must 
be "line upon line, precept upon precept, 
here a little and tKere a little," until the 
principles of Christian ethics, as well as the 
great fact of the atonement for the sins of 
the whole world, are clearly understood by the 
average among all these thousand millions 
of darkened, sin-laden mxen and women. Well 
may Christians stand appalled at the stupen- 
dous task ! None but those who can truly say 
31 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

"I believe in the Holy Ghost," will seriously 
undertake it. 

The second definition is a corollary to the 
first : "To pervade with the spirit of the gos- 
pel." When the Christless nations are "evan- 
gelized" their civilization will be neither pa- 
gan, nor agnostic, but Christian. There will 
be many unbelievers, as there are yet in the 
most Christian communities, but the atmos- 
phere wdll have in it the bracing ozone of the 
Sermon on the Mount. When the pagan 
world is "evangelized" the monstrous prac- . 
tices, domestic, social, and political, which 
now prevail in nearly all non-Christian lands, 
will be displaced by lofty Christian ideals and 
institutions. While there may be relics of 
barbarism in many places, as there are to-day 
in the most enlightened States, yet they will 
not be enthroned in the hearts of the people ; 
they will be decaying and in the process of 
vanishing away before the conquering forces 
of righteousness and truth. 

If any "doubting Thomas" is disposed to 
dispute the accuracy of this as the ultimate 
22 



Definition 

goal of the work in which Christian mis- 
sionaries are engaged, let him turn to our 
original instructions : "Go ye there- 
Great fore, and make disciples of all the 

Com- nations, baptizing them into the 
mission 

name of the Father and of the Son 

and of the Holy Ghost." Nothing could be 
more sweeping than the terms of the above 
order. Nor were they to be baptized wholesale, 
as was done with not a few European nations : 
"Teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
ever I commanded you." This is exactly in 
harmony with the above first definition of 
"evangelize," "to instruct in the gospel." If 
the task seems herculean now, what must it 
have appeared to that little company of Gali- 
lean peasants ! 'T is well the Master added : 
"And lo, I am with you all the days, even 
unto the consummation of the age."^ With 
that promise ringing in their ears, the dis- 
ciples went forth. "The consummation of 
the age" is not yet, and the promise is still 
unto us. The question is: Shall the age 

1 Matt., xxvill, 19-20. R. V. margin. 

23 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

^^ consummate" in our generation? Earnest, 
God-fea,ring, practical laymen are asking us 
to tell them : "From the human standpoint, 
how many missionaries and how much money 
will it require to carry out this command of 
our Lord in our generation?""' We have a 
right to assume that the promise of the great 
Commissioner will be fulfilled and the divine 
side of the work will not fail; but we have 
no warrant for expecting the end without the 
use of means, up to the measure of our abil- 
ity. Such an assumption is .not faith, but 
fanaticism. Hence the second question is: 
Are adequate means within the reasonable 
limits of the ability of this generation of 
disciples? 

These are the two crucial questions to 
which the w^riter proposes to give answer, to 
the best of his knowledge, in the following 
pages. 



U 



Chapter II. 

PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN 
HORTICULTURE. 

There is a very general impression among 
friends of missions that the only thing neces- 
sary to the world's evangelization 
damental is a sufficient number of mission- 
aries. There are large and useful 
missionary societies conducted apparently 
upon this principle, and almost their entire 
income is expended upon the support of the 
missionaries themselves. In any adequate 
discussion of the problem of world evangel- 
ism we must first settle clearly the question 
of the relation of the foreign missionary to 
this work. Is he to be "the whole thing/' 
or is he to be simply a John the Baptist, who 
is to prepare the way for the real evangelist 
25 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

in each country? If, like the great Fore- 
runner, the missionary must decrease while 
the native increases, then the kind of work 
the missionary does will be profoundly af- 
fected by that fact. This question of policy 
not only seriously modifies the work of the 
missionary upon the field ; it has vital relation 
to the problem of home supplies. If the 
missionary is to be chiefly his own evangelist, 
doing all he can to tell the story to as many as 
possible, then, when he is sent out, the Board 
need consider only the question of the sup- 
port of the man and his family. But if the 
policy is to send missionaries who will be oc- 
cupied chiefly in perpetuating and multiply- 
ing themselves in a large number of young 
people, under training for service in well 
ordered institutions, or in directing and help- 
ing many native workers in the actual labor 
of evangelization, then, when a missionary is 
appointed to a given field, the Board must 
reckon with not only the fact that the mis- 
sionary is to be provided for, but in a short 
time the work to which he is assigned must 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

be supplied with necessary funds. This out- 
lay may be, and, we believe, in most cases 
should be, considerably more than the cost 
of the support of the missionary himself. 
Hence, whether we view the question from 
the standpoint of the field or from that of 
the home supplies, no progress can be made 
in considering the practical problem of the 
cost of evangelism of Christless lands until 
we clearly define the policy to be pursued. 

To go back to the first missionary and 
study His example is conservative and safe. 
Original He traveled about a good deal. 
Method preaching the gospel of the king- 
dom. The multitudes heard Him gladly ; but 
He early chose out from among His followers 
a small group who became His chief care. 
He preached constantly in public, but He 
explained in private (Mark iv, 34) to these 
often very dull pupils the meaning of what 
He had said to the crowds. He promised these 
peasant fishermen : "Greater works than these 
shall ye do." It is reasonable to assume 
that if our Lord had done everything else 
27 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

in His life just as He did, except the selec- 
tion and instruction of the College of 
Apostles, there would be no Christian Church 
in the world to-day. The Apostle to the 
Gentiles was a wider traveler and his work 
extended over many more years than his Mas- 
ter's; but he always seemed to have a group 
of young men under training, traveling with 
him, and from these he appointed the bishops 
and leaders of the early Church, as Titus 
and Timothy. 

But we need not take time here to argue at 
length to prove what few readers will dis- 
pute, as far as theory is concerned, that the 
best way for a missionary to evangelize is to 
multiply himself as much as possible in na- 
tive agents. Manifestly, these are far less 
expensive than foreign evangelists, and they 
know the language and the people better than 
many foreigners ever succeed in learning 
them. Given the Christian character and 
knowledge in equal measure, they make far 
more effective evangelists, man for man, than 
the foreign missionaries possibly can become. 
28 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

The notion that the Christless nations can 
be evangelized by the foreign missionaries 
wholly, or even chiefly, grows from 
Lead^^s what we believe to be an erroneous 
Tempo- idea of evangelization, — not Chris- 
tianizing, but simply informing 
them that there is a Savior for mankind. We 
do not think a discussion of the theological 
side of this question would be profitable. Our 
concern is simply for the concrete problem: 
Does God design tc give the gospel of His 
Son to the Mongolian, the Hindu, and the 
African, as He has given it to the Anglo- 
Saxon, the German, and the Scandinavian? 
A few centuries ago these ''most favored na- 
tions" were tribes of fierce savages, using the 
skulls of their slaughtered enemies for drink- 
ing-cups at their heathen festivals. Is a 
similar reformation to take place throughout 
the uncivilized tribes and races of to-day.^ 
Are the non-Christian civilizations of modern 
times to be transformed, as were the ancient 
pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome, un- 
der the power of the Christian leaven ? If this 
29 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

Is the goal, then all must admit that the most 
the foreigner of an alien race can do is to be 
the agent in God's hands of setting the spir- 
itual forces at work. No race of men can 
be profoundly and permanently moved ex- 
cept by its own leaders. Outside influences 
only become eff*ective by their laying hold 
upon the men of power in the nation itself. 
This is such a truism that examples scarcely 
need be cited. No French Wesley could have 
reformed eighteenth century England. All 
history might be evoked to prove this funda- 
mental truth. It is no less true of religious 
movements than it is of epoch-making periods 
in literature and art, or social and political 
progress. The masses of the people in all 
ages and nations simply will not follow an 
alien leader. Our ultimate work, then, as 
foreign missionaries, is not, as many good 
men will say, "to lead the native evangelists 
in their work.'' This is necessary in the be- 
ginning, but it is a temporary stage in the 
process of development. This evolution must 
reach the point where the leaders are not the 
30 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

men and women from foreign lands, but 
those of their converts, trained and baptized 
into this great service for the redemption of 
their own people, who are intellectually and 
spiritually qualified for the great task. 

As to how this leadership may be secured 
or raised up in the mission fields, the follow- 
ing important and recent utterance 
^fieW'?" from Dr. D. Z. Sheffield, of the 

State- American Board Mission of North 
ment 

China, shows the drift and present 

consensus of opinion amongst missionaries 
in China, and probably no less so of those 
in other countries. In writing upon the 
theme, "The China Centenary Conference 
and Christian Education," in the July, 1907, 
number of the Chinese Recorder, he says: 
"The dominating note in the Conference of 
1877 was undoubtedly that which found ex- 
pression from the lips of one of the most dis- 
tinguished living missionaries, 'Preach, 
preach, preach;' and the excellent article by 
Dr. Martin, urging that qualified mission- 
aries should give a portion of their time to 
31 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

teaching and to producing a general litera- 
ture for the Chinese, inspired with the spirit 
of Christianity, found less sympathetic listen- 
ers than a like article would have found at 
the Conference of 1907. In this Conference 
(1907), which extended through ten days, 
about one-third of the time was occupied in 
discussing themes in which education in some 
of its aspects was involved. One full day 
was given to the question as to the best means 
of producing an efficient Chinese ministry to 
meet the needs of a rapidly growing Church. 
A generation earlier, while the need of a na- 
tive ministry was distinctly in sight, the need 
of a well-developed educational system to 
produce such a ministry was far less dis- 
tinctly apprehended than it is at present. It 
was hoped that an ever-increasing number of 
Confucian students would be won to Chris- 
tianity in early or middle life, who with lim- 
ited Christian training would enter into 
Christian w^ork and in time become accept- 
able leaders of the Church. 

"The hope has largely failed of realiza- 
32 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

lion, and while many good men of this type 
have been secured, the supply has been pre- 
carious and inadequate. At best, as leaders 
of the Church, such men fall far short, in 
fitness for their responsibilities, of men who 
from youth onwards have received a broad 
and thorough Christian training. — Thus the 
second and third generations of missionaries 
in China are learning that for the permanence 
and future growth of the work in hand they 
must both ^preach, preach, preach,' and 
'teach, teach, teach.' — Emphasis, therefore, 
was placed on the need of developing a sys- 
tem of Christian education for the Church 
of China with well equipped primary schools, 
with intermediate schools at convenient cen- 
ters, where the better class of students could 
receive a wider training, and a limited num- 
ber of schools of college grade, where select 
students cpuld receive a broad and thorough 
education to fit them for places of leadership 
in the Church. Following such preparatory 
training, candidates for the Christian min- 
istry should receive a further three years of 
3 33 



The Cost of Chuistian Conquest 

theological training. Men thus educated, 
though at the outset produced in limited 
numbers, will do vastly more for the Church 
than an untrained ministry in setting before 
it the true ideals of the Christian life and in 
commending Christianity to the attention of 
the leaders of thought in China." 

Doctor Sheffield was Chairman of the 
Committee on the "Chinese Ministry" of the 
Centenary Conference. The above quotation 
is given at such length because it presents 
from the most recent and highest authority 
the consensus of opinion of the missionary 
body of China upon this subject of supreme 
importance. If these conclusions are of any 
value whatever, they must influence strongly, 
if not practically control, the missionary pol- 
icy of the future. 

What must be the effect of this policy 

Fff upon the cost of Christian con- 

Upon quest ? If the theory herein set forth 

the is the correct one, and the prime 

Work business of the missionary is to raise 

up a body of trained native agents who 

34 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

will do the direct work of Christianizing their 
own people, then the support of the individ- 
ual missionary is but a fraction of the cost 
of this campaign of world conquest. The 
expense of maintaining a standing army in 
time of peace is less than half the cost of 
actual war. The explosives consumed in one 
day's battle would pay the soldiers for 
months. To send missionaries to the field in 
such numbers that the resources of the so- 
ciety are so drained in paying their salaries 
that little can be used to support the work 
they are there to do, is like sending soldiers 
to the front without ammunition, or with 
such a limited supply that they are forced 
either to fire only an occasional volley, or run 
short right in the midst of the battle. What 
would be thought of a War Department that 
put all its resources into increasing the num- 
ber of enlisted men and consequently failed 
to provide the munitions of war? Mani- 
festly, one regiment of re-enforcements fully 
equipped with arms, ammunition, and well- 
filled baggage train, would be of more aid 
35 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

to a hard-pressed army on the battlefield 
than a whole army corps of soldiers with 
empty belts and wagons. All over the mis- 
sion field, in the most successful missions, 
this pressure for funds to sustain and extend 
the work is being most keenly felt. Experi- 
enced missionaries are unable to accomplish 
half of what they might do, because of the 
lack of an additional one or two thousand 
dollars a year. When builders attempt to 
make "bricks without straw," or soldiers to 
wage war without weapons, the results must 
be disappointing. Many of the great mis- 
sionary societies are realizing this fact more 
and more clearly, but it needs to be empha- 
sized and reiterated until the whole mission- 
ary constituency at home and abroad accept 
is as an established principle of missionary 
policy. 

The proportion of the entire cost which 
should go to the work as distinguished from 
the foreign workers will be discussed in detail 
in a later chapter; sufBce it to say that, if 
the position here taken is correct, then, if a 
36 



Principles of Christian Horticui^ture 

missionary society has one hundred thousand 
dollars with which to re-enforce its missions, 
and estimates that this is sufficient to send 
out and support for a year, say, fifty new 
families, if it has no additional resources in 
view, it would be better for the interests of 
the kingdom of God to appoint about half 
that number of workers, and reserve the money 
thus saved to support the work these mission- 
aries are expected to do. The case is plain 
enough when applied directly to the evangel- 
istic work. Here is a district with a popula- 
tion of a quarter of a million. The mission- 
ary society furnishes three thousand dollars 
a year for the work there. How can this 
money be expended most profitably .^^ Two 
families might be supported with little if any 
margin; and these two men and their wives 
might work incessantly in preaching Christ 
to these multitudes. Or one family might be 
placed there and half the money be used in 
employing twenty or thirty native evangelists 
under the supervision of the one missionary. 
Can there be any question as to which policy 
37 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

would result in the greater good? So much 
for the direct evangelistic work: but where 
will this one missionary secure his score or 
more evangelists? If they be wholly un- 
trained men they may do more harm than 
good, and their effectiveness will depend not 
merely, nor even chiefly, upon the ability of 
the missionary to supervise their work, but 
upon the quality of their previous training. 
This preparation means expense, more than 
that involved in the support of the mission- 
ary himself. What will be the approximate 
cost of such training? is one of our chief 
objects of inquiry. 

But the work of Christian missions is vastly 
more than simply winning converts. Indeed, 

_ it may be seriously questioned 

Wider whether that is their chief service. 
Here, at any rate, comes in the sec- 
ond definition of "evangelize :" "to pervade 
with the spirit of the gospel.'' The first 
duty of the Christian in any land is to rep- 
resent Christ. All his doings should remind 
others of, or illustrate to them, the life of 
38 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

Him of whom it was said: "He went about 
doing good." If this is true of the individ- 
ual Christian anywhere, how much more must 
it be the work of a group of men and women 
who come to live before a hostile, critical, or 
wholly ignorant and indifferent community 
for the purpose of establishing the Christian 
religion ? 

The life of Jesus was so manifold in its ac- 
tivities, and still more so in the principles em- 
bodied and illustrated, that no one worker can 
represent them all in concrete form, no mat- 
ter how Christlike his spirit may be ; physical 
limitations make it impossible. The Master 
could put forth His hand, touch the kneeling 
leper and say: "I will; be thou clean." We 
can only establish asj^lums for these poor out- 
casts, and make life less dreary. Some day 
science may find a way to heal, but it will not 
be by a touch and a word. He could heal in- 
stantly multitudes of sick, as they were car- 
ried to Him by anxious friends. We can 
])uild hospitals and with loving care and en- 
lightened skill work wonders in the eyes of 
39 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the ignorant masses; but it requires men and 
women who have little time and strength left 
for anything else. He could cast out seven 
devils from Mary Magdalene. We can build 
and equip comfortable homes where the 
"woman who was a sinner" can be led and 
loved back to purity and peace. He could 
send into the swine the legion of devils from 
the maniac in the tombs. We can build 
asylums where the insane in many cases may 
be cured, and in all given humane, loving 
treatment, which is not accorded them in any 
pagan land. He could heal the epileptic boy 
with a sentence. We can at least provide 
homes for incurables, where, when the parox- 
ysm seizes the poor sufferer, he will not "fall 
into the fire or into the water." 

Such manifold Christian activities, carried 
on by missionaries in all lands, will cost many 
millions every year, and doubtless an occa- 
sional disciple will be heard to murmur, 
"Why this waste?" But let us remember that 
the one who originally raised that objection 
did not turn out well. He greatly misrep- 
40 



Principles of Christian Horticulture 

resented his Master, and finally ^'went to his 
own place." Rather let us with lavish prodi- 
gality pour out the precious ointment of His 
loving service for the weak and helpless of 
all lands, until the whole world is filled with 
the fragrance of His life. How else can 
the pagan peoples understand His life and 
death for them? And how else can the mil- 
lions upon millions of disciples living in 
abundance in Christian lands hear Him say 
in that day, "They have done what they 
could"? 

There is still another feature of the com- 
posite picture of the world's Rede.emer that 
g . . must be presented to the Christless 
Redemp- nations, if the true image of His 
life is seen by them. Christ came 
not only to save the individual, but to redeem 
society ; not only to fit men for mansions in 
His Father's house, but to give them decent 
traveling accommodations while on their 
journey to the "better land." The poverty 
of the great mass of the non-Christian world 
is wholly incomprehensible to the comfort- 
41 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

surrounded Occidental Christian. Descrip- 
tions are entirely inadequate. No attempt 
will be made here to prove such an undisputed 
fact. Labor in all these lands is very poorly 
paid, and is looked upon as most degrading. 
As a consequence, educated people will not 
labor with their hands, and laboring people 
are uneducated. Of course, unintelligent 
labor is unremunerative. It is paid for at 
its full value. There is no "sweating," no 
oppression of labor by capital; the output 
is not worth any more. The wage earner in 
Christian lands owes his social position to the 
Carpenter of Nazareth. The sociological 
condition of pagan nations is the logical 
outcome of their philosophy and religion. 
These peoples, especially the Asiatics, are 
rapidly awakening to the superiority of the 
appliances of western civilization. They are 
eager to secure these material benefits for 
themselves. 

This situation gives the Christian Church 
a singularly great opportunity. The intro- 
duction of modern industrial skill and ap- 
42 



Principles of Christian Hokticultuue 

pliances into the Orient under Christian aus- 
pices will give to these Eastern peoples cor- 
rect ideas of the relation of Christianity to 
Christian civilization. Otherwise they will 
naturally conclude that the two things have 
no vital relation to each other; hence they 
will strive to secure the temporal benefits, 
while they reject the moral and spiritual 
blessings. The outcome will be, at best, a 
race of civilized agnostics ; the house swept 
and garnished, but empty, will be entered 
into and possessed by seven other devils, and 
the last state will be worse than the first. 
China armed and wealthy, but still pagan, 
would be a menace that would prolong in- 
definitely the ^^armed peace" that is now the 
greatest burden upon Christendom. On the 
other hand, now while these Oriental nations 
are keenly realizing their need and their 
ignorance, a helping hand will be eagerly 
grasped. Industrial education will be the 
"open sesame" to the hearts of the multitudes. 
It will help greatly in making the native 
Churches self-supporting, for the converts in 
43 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

mission fields are amazingly liberal with their 
limited means. Increase their earning power, 
and they will more than repay the cost of 
giving it to them. It will also help to make 
educational institutions self-supporting. It 
is absolutely necessary, in most schools where 
native Christians are educated, either to give 
free board to the students or in some way 
to enable them to support themselves. 
Surely the latter way is; the better, both for 
the character of the pupils and for their 
future usefulness. 

In a word, the object of foreign mission- 
ary work is to give unto others that which 

we ourselves have received from 
The 
Problem Christ. Freely we have received, 

^'fi^d'" ^^'^ should as freely give. The 
Christianity of Asia and Africa 
will be, in all essential features, like the Chris- 
tianity of Europe and America. Nothing 
more is possible, for the stream can not rise 
above its source; nothing less w^ill meet the 
requirements of these nations nor fulfill our 
own obligations to* them. At first sight, this 
44 



Principles of Christian Horticuj.ture 

manifoldness seems to increase enormously 
our difficulties. The expense both of money 
and men is enlarged, and the immediate end 
aimed at seems to be farther away; but in 
reality it is not so. How much easier it will 
be to interest all classes of society in mission 
work that has every variety of philanthropic 
activity that we see in a Christian land! A 
portion of the Christian public is interested 
in the distinctively evangelistic work; others 
see in hospitals the embodiment of the Christ 
life ; many look upon the Master as the great 
Teacher, and give liberally for education of 
the young; multitudes of business men will 
see in the gospel of the Carpenter the solu- 
tion of the world's woes. The very manifold- 
ness of the appeal gives it pov/er, like the 
many chords in the performance of a great 
orchestra. The whole of the Christian public 
will unite in support of a scheme of evan- 
gelization that is as multiform as Christianity 
itself. Further, the supply of missionaries 
vv ill be far more easily secured by calling for 
a variety of workers. If all are to be evan- 
45 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

gelists, in the technical sense of that term, 
we must limit our search to the ranks of 
preachers, graduates of theological semi- 
naries, deaconess training schools and the 
like. These institutions alone can not pos- 
sibly furnish the required number of qualified 
candidates to do the work in the specified 
time. But enlarge the scope of the work to 
take in specialists in the various lines of 
Christian philanthropy: send out many medi- 
cal men and women, technologists in indus- 
trial arts, especially trained pedagogists, 
practical typographers for the printing 
plants ; in short, send specialists for each 
branch of work to be done, and the supply 
will equal the demand in a normal way, for 
it is nature's way, which is God's own way. 



46 



Chapter III. 

PRINCIPLES APPLIED. 

To find the constituent parts of the whole 

ocean the chemist needs but one pint of sea 

,„„ water. The differences in the vari- 

Why a 

Specimen ous mission fields, at least in civil- 
ized lands, are very largely due to 
temporary causes, and to shorter time of 
cultivation. The resemblances are far more 
numerous and permanent than the contrasts. 
Paganism is fundamentally the same the 
world over. Moreover, the forces that are 
making for the world's advancement and en- 
lightenment are rapidly becoming more and 
more widely and evenly distributed through- 
out the non-Christian world. In endeavoring 
to make an estimate, then, of the cost of the 
Christian conquest of these Christless nations, 
instead of beginning with the countless popu- 
lations, let us follow the example of the chem- 
47 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ist with the ocean, take a typical corner of 
the vinej^ard, and, with our half century of 
experience behind us and the concrete results 
before us, make an estimate of what will be 
needed to transform this bit of moral and 
spiritual wilderness into a well-watered gar- 
den of the Lord. If we can reach tolerably 
accurate conclusions for the one section, these 
results, applied to the whole wide mission 
field, are not likely to be very far astray. 
While the conclusions for one field may not 
be equally applicable to all parts of the 
world, yet the average for all may be ap- 
proximated, and that is the goal at which 
we aim. Though some fields may call for a 
smaller expenditure of money and men, 
others probably will require more, so that 
the aggregate result, it is hoped, will not 
be very wide of the mark. 

I. A Typical Corner of the Vineyard. 

It would be folly for the writer to take as 
a typical example any other field than the 
one with which he is most familiar. Conclu- 

48 



Principles Applied 

sions drawn from inexperience would have 
little value and no weight with others. Hence 
the necessity' of selecting the Fukien Prov- 
ince of China as the location, and the Meth- 
odist Episcopal missions there as the basis of 
our study. The Fukien Province lies in the 
latitude of the Florida peninsula, on the 
coast, the southern half being opposite the 
island of Formosa. With an area of 46,320 
square miles, it claims a population of 22,- 
.876,540,^ or at the astonishing rate of 494 
per square mile. Only two of China's twenty- 
two provinces surpass it in density of popu- 
lation, the famous Shantung Province with 
683, and Honan with 520 ; while but one 
other equals it, Hupeh, with exactly the same 
number. 

For practical purposes we may count the 
population at twenty-three millions, and the 
density at five hundred per square mile. As 
the mountainous interior is much more thinly 
populated than the coast, the plains near the 
sea must be far more densely peopled than 

2 statesman's Year Book for 1907, page 810. 
4 49 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the average of the whole province. There is 
no properly collated census published^ so that 
all our estimates must be reckoned as more 
or less accurate guesses. However^ the cal- 
culation is made upon units of population, 
rather than upon extent of territory, and 
results should give a basis of estimate for 
any population. When China takes a proper 
census, the rate of expenditure per capita 
can be applied to the corrected data of popu- 
lation in any given section. There are six 
missionary societies working in the province : 
three English, — ^the London, English Pres- 
byterian, and Church Missionary Societies; 
and three American, — the Dutch Reformed, 
American Board, and Methodist Episcopal. 
All began work within seven years of each 
other, about sixty years ago, and all have 
prospered. In the southern part of the 
province, the three missions ¥/orking with 
headquarters in Amoy — the London, English 
Presbyterian, and Reformed (Dutch), of 
America, made an early division of their ter- 
50 



Principles Applied 

ritory among themselves, and there is no 
overlapping, so that the field of each mission 
is clearly defined. The three societies work- 
ing from Foochow — the Church Mission, 
American Board, and Methodist Episcopal — 
for better or for worse, we can not say, par- 
tially failed to carry out the original division 
of territory, so that there is considerable 
overlapping. It is necessary to allow for 
this fact in getting at the real extent of our 
Methodist Episcopal territory or population 
for whose evangelization we may consider 
ourselves responsible. 

The table on the following page gives, by 
civil districts, the estimated population where 
the Methodist Mission is working. 

II. The Husbandmen. 

Assuming that this estimate of population 
is fairly correct, what is the probable cost of 
supporting the foreign missionaries necessary 
for the evangelization of this seven and one- 
half million people .^^ 

51 



Total Methodist 
Responsibility 
in Province 



Total Methodist 
Population by 
Conferences 



Methodist 
Share of^Popu- 
iation 



Other Missions 
in District 



Estimated 
Total Popula- 
tion 



Name of Dis- 
trict 



o 

"A 

o 
Q 



O 
O 
O 



O 
O 

o 



oo 
oo 

oo 



o 

s 



OQO 
OOO 

ooo 

888 



^ ^««^a> 







o 

o 

O 

o" 

O 

o^ 
c6 



oo 

o^o^ 

o"o" 
oo 

O lO 



o 
o 
o 



ooo 
ooo 
oo^o 

o ooo 

O^ lO^O^CVI^ 



k l>5 c5 cj c (^ q 



o 

o 
o 
o 



03 O 






* o 

-^ O 
o .22 



CO o 

o ^ 



o 



o 
o 



W 



S o 

C3 ^ 



Principles Applied 

The Central Conference in China of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, at its last quad- 
rennial session, which met at 
How 
Many Shanghai in May, 1907, adopted 

d^T?^' ^^^ following resolutions as a prac- 
tical basis for estimating the num- 
ber of workers, Chinese and foreign, required 
to meet the evangelistic needs of China: 

"1. Resolved, That we fix, as the common 
denominator for the calculation, one mission- 
ary to every twenty-five thousand of the 
population; meaning by 'missionary,' a man, 
lay or clerical, or his wife, or an unmar- 
ried missionary of either (the General or 
Woman's ) society. 

"2. Resolved, That one Chinese pastor or 
evangelist is needed for every two thousand 
of the population, and an equal number of 
Bible-women, or other Chinese women work- 
ers."" 

The Secretary of the Missionary Society 
of the United Presbyterian Church reports: 
"It is the judgment of our Missionary Asso- 

3 Minutes of Central Conference, 1907, p. 31. 

53 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ciation that there should be at least one man 
and one woman to every fifty thousand."^ 

The estimate of the Presbyterian Church 
(Northern) is upon the same basis. In the 
statement of the United Presbyterian Secre- 
tary, however, there is one qualification with 
which we do not agree: "In this count (one 
man and one woman to 50,000) no regard is 
had for such missionaries as would be em- 
ployed in educational work and work other 
than direct evangelistic work." It is doubt- 
ful if any considerable number of experienced 
missionaries would support this position. We 
believe that scarcely half the missionaries 
need be employed in what is called the "direct 
evangelistic work." With this exception, the 
statement by this secretary seems to be the 
most thoroughly worked out and comprehen- 
sive outline of our problem that has yet ap- 
peared. It is with this Board that Mr. J. 
Campbell White is connected, who, perhaps 
more than any other man, seems to have been 

4 Report of Fourteenth Conference of Foreign Mission 
Boards, 1907, p. 42. 

54 



Principles Applied 

the soul of the "Laymen's Missionary Move- 
ment" in its inception. We shall have occa- 
sion to refer to this report again. 

Upon the basis of twenty-five thousand 
population per missionary this Fukien field 
Gradual calls for three hundred missionaries. 

Re-en- being one hundred respectively for 
force- 
ment De- each of the sections ; ( 1 ) the Foo- 

sirable chow-speaking districts; (2) the 
longbing, or corrupt Mandarin-speaking dis- 
trict ; (3) the Hinghua Conference. These 
three hundred should be divided into one 
hundred families, and an equal number of 
unmarried missionaries, almost entirely 
women. Of course, it would not be practi- 
cable to send such a large number in one 
year, even if the money were provided. The 
qualified missionaries could not be found in 
such numbers among the candidates of any 
one Church; the necessary residences on the 
field could not be provided so rapidly; more- 
over, it is not probable that such a large pro- 
portion of new missionaries in any field could 
be assimilated satisfactorily. The present 
55 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

force of the two Fukien Conferences is sev- 
enty. The problem is to raise this number to 
three hundred, or to add two hundred and 
thirty. If this can be done within a decade, 
it is probable that the additions will be as 
rapid as can be made with the best results. 
What we want is a practical scheme that is 
workable — not a mere theory. It does not 
seem to be unreasonable to expect the Church 
to send re-enforcements at the rate of ten 
per cent per annum until the force is raised 
to the full quota. It must be borne in mind 
that there is always considerable shrinkage 
in sending recruits to mission fields. During 
the ten years from 1890 to 1900, thirty-nine 
Methodist missionaries arrived in Fukien; of 
these, twenty-five have rendered a decade or 
more of service, or are still on the field. The 
loss of fourteen from various causes, or 
thirty-six per cent, shows that we must leave 
quite a margin if we are to reach the full 
three hundred in ten years. However, the 
decade above mentioned shows very unusual 
mortality, and should not be counted as an 
56 



Principles Applied 

average; but if the present force of seventy 
is taken for the possible losses, or twenty- 
three per cent of the three hundred, it is 
probable that we should be reckoning safely. 
This would require ten new families and ten 
unmarried missionaries, or a total of thirty, 
arriving each year for a decade. 

As to expense, examples differ widely. The 
budget of one great society working in China 

- ^ ^ shows that the entire income from 
Cost of 

Mission- all sources, divided equally among 
the missionaries reported, gives 
scarcely three hundred and fifty dollars for 
each, to say nothing of the expense of the 
work supported. On the other hand, the 
regular American Church societies usually 
pay salaries to married men of about one 
thousand to twelve hundred dollars, and an 
allowance of one hundred dollars for each 
child, with an additional grant of from fifty 
to one hundred dollars to older children in 
school in America. English societies allow 
about the same. The cost of living in the 
Far East is increasing steadily. Upon this 
57 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

account, already several societies have slightlj^ 
advanced their scale. While we greatly sym- 
pathize with those who would reduce the cost 
of this work to the lowest point consistent 
with the best results, yet the experience of a 
century has confirmed in the minds of most 
of the students of the problem, the old prin- 
ciple that it is not wise to "muzzle the ox 
that treadeth out the corn.'' Three societies 
in China which follow the plan of the native 
style of living and correspondingly lovv^ ex- 
pense, report twenty-eight per cent of the 
missionaries, but only six and one-fourth per 
cent of the Christian community are the 
fruits of their labors. No criticism is here 
intended regarding the work of as noble and 
self-sacrificing a body of Christian men and 
women as the sun shines upon. For them it 
may be the best way. Comparison here is 
only made in order that we may see clearly 
the policy of the regular Church societies is 
not an extravagant one, but that practical 
testing has proved it to be the best economy. 
Besides support, there is also the residence 
58 



Principles Applied 

of the new missionary to be built, which costs 
from $2,500 to $4,000. Wages and prices 
of building materials are steadily rising in 
the Orient, along with the cost of living. 
Further, the missionary requires furloughs 
regularly, and irregular breakdowns cost 
many thousands. The usual expense of one 
trip, one way, for one person, between 
America and China, is $300. Then the per- 
sonal teacher, freight and messenger for sup- 
plies to the interior, sanitary and evangelistic 
traveling and the like, make quite a sum 
every year. If one thousand dollars annu- 
ally for each individual missionary be counted 
as an average, there is not likely to be much 
of a margin either way. During the early 
years, when families are small, the balance 
of several hundred dollars per family will 
give sufficient to build the residence. Later, 
the cost of children, furloughs, and other 
expenses, will generally consume the full 
amount of this estimate. So that the finance 
committees of the Foochow and Hinghua 
Conferences, at their meetings in July, 1907, 
59 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

have both unanimously agreed, as the plan 
of campaign for their Fukien field, to call 
for three hundred missionaries to come out 
at the rate of thirty a year for the next ten 
years, and that this will involve an expense 
at the end of the decade of about three hun- 
dred thousand dollars per annum for foreign 
missionaries alone, exclusive of the cost of 
the work they are sent to do. This means an 
increase in the tenth year, over present out- 
lay, of about a quarter of a million, or an 
annual increase of twenty-five thout?,and dol- 
lars for this one item. 

III. The Vines. 

It was a bright Sabbath morning in June, 
1907. Three men sat around the breakfast- 
table in the college president's residence at 
Foochow, discussing the problems of the 
Kingdom, and the future possible develop- 
ment of the work they had come to China in 
Christ's name to do. The missionaries had 
been asked by their missionary secretaries 
to estimate what, in their judgment, would 
60 



Principles Applied 

be required in men and money to evangelize 
their field during this generation. Uncon- 
scious of the flight of time, this little group 
of practical students of mission problems 
passed from one feature of the work to an- 
other, until every line of the missionary ac- 
tivity seemed to have been covered. The 
church bells reminded them that three hours 
had passed. The results were talked over 
informally with others, and finally submitted 
to the judgment of all in the two missions, 
and with but slight modifications in details, 
but no difference in totals, these conclusions 
were forwarded to the missionary office as the 
unanimous action of the Methodist mission- 
ary body of Fukien. 

After going over the ground covered in 

the preceding sections of this chapter, and 

working out the comparatively sim- 

Rate Ex- pie problem of the number of mis- 
cessive ? . . ^ ^ , n • i 

sionaries needed, cost oi mainte- 
nance, and rate of increase both of men and 
money, the far more complicated question of 
the work these three hundred men and women 
61 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

should do loomed up before this trio in truly 
vast proportions. Naturally, the above 
quoted second resolution of the Central Con- 
ference furnished the point of departure for 
any estimate : "One Chinese preacher to every 
two thousand of the population, and an equal 
number of women workers." Was the basis 
excessive.^ One thought it might be so, until 
another remembered that in America there 
is one ordained minister to every five hundred 
and sixty-three of the population! In that 
number no account is taken of the many or- 
dained lay preachers giving all their time to 
the work, while our China figure applies to 
the "local preachers" employed "under the 
presiding elder," as well as to the members 
of conference. Certainly a parish of two 
thousand, or four hundred families, is as 
large as the average man can cultivate in 
such a way as to be able to have it truthfully 
said they are "instructed in the gospel," and 
that the community has become "pervaded 
with the spirit of the gospel." It was agreed 
that as a finality this number would be alto- 
62 



Principles Applied 

gether insufficient, but it was believed that 
when there were so many Christian preachers , 
each with a goodly number of Church mem- 
bers around him, then the Christian commu- 
nity might be expected to carry on the work 
to a finish by their own efi*orts. 

This rate calls for three thousand seven 
hundred and fifty preachers for our seven 

and one-half million people. The 
One . . 

Hundred goal is to reach this number at the 

R^ecruit^ end of thirty-three years. There 
per An- was no difference of opinion that, 
as a rule, these men should be care- 
fully trained before going into the work. If 
fifty new men were sent annually for thirty- 
three years into each of the three sections of 
two and one-half million, namely, Foochow, 
longbing, Hinghua, or a total of one hun- 
dred and fifty per annum, in thirty-three 
years the entire number would aggregate 
four thousand nine hundred and fifty. To 
these add the two hundred and fifty now un- 
der appointment, and we have a total of five 
thousand two hundred. This would leave a 
63 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

margin for losses of one thousand four hun- 
dred and fifty, or nearly twenty-eight per 
cent. This was thought to be as low a figure 
for shrinkage as would be safe to count upon 
for so long a period. If it is not enough, the 
full number may be made up by the men who 
have had no special school training, but a 
few of whom, for various reasons, are sure 
to be employed, as they are in every country. 

IV. The Nus-sery. 

It will take a large nursery, and thousands 
of seedlings, to produce so many healthy, 
fruit-bearing vines in the time specified. To 
none will the task seem more difficult than to 
the practical missionary who has labored long 
and experienced many disappointments in 
seeking to develop an efficient and adequate 
native ministry. To expect to set out every 
year for a generation an average of one 
hundred and fifty well-developed, grafted, 
fruitful vines, when the labor of sixty years 
now shows scarcely twice that number, seems 
at first thought to be mere dreaming. Evi- 
64 



Principles Applied 

dently, the problem is a far more complicated 
one than that of the increase of the mission- 
SiVj force. Given the husbandmen with the 
necessary capital, and the Lord of the vine- 
yard can increase his laborers indefinitely. 
But the vines are subject to so many contin- 
gencies of soil, weathei quality of seed and 
skill of cultivation, tnat the outcome is al- 
ways a matter of uncertainty. While the 
scheme calls for a more than fourfold increase 
of the foreign force, the Chinese workers are 
to be multiplied by fifteen. They can not 
be "hired." They must be raised up out of 
the gradually growing Christian Church. 
Surely, either radically new methods must be 
introduced, or equally radical new develop- 
ments of the old methods must be instituted, 
if there is to be any such multiplication of 
the Chinese ministry as is here contemplated. 
It is plain that several j^ears must elapse be- 
fore such large numbers of young men can 
be entering the ranks of our Chinese ministry 
every year. It seems to be impossible, even 
with any amount of funds at our disposal, to 
5 65 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

reach, in less than one decade, this necessary 
annual average increase of one hundred and 
fifty. The later years would have to be re- 
lied upon to make up for the shortage at the 
beginning. 

It is estimated that there would need to be 
nine hundred students *n the schools for train- 
ing preachers, in order to graduate 
Hundred one hundred and fifty annually. 
I J ,1 To those who have not had a col- 
lege course, we have found it neces- 
sary to give five, instead of three, years of 
training. Probably two-thirds of the stu- 
dents would be of this class. To graduate 
one hundred of them it v/ould be necessary 
to have in the five classes from seven to eight 
hundred students, for there is always quite 
a falling off* from various causes. The three 
classes of college graduates, to send out fifty, 
would need to number between one hundred 
and fifty and two hundred. It goes without 
saying that these nine hundred could not be 
taught in any one school. The largest theo- 
logical seminary in Methodism enrolls 
66 



Principl.es Applied 

scarcely two hundred students. In training 
men for the ministry, close personal touch 
between teacher and pupil is a fundamental 
necessity. Classes of more than sixty are 
impracticable, and better half that number. 
Moreover, experiment has proved that the 
best results are obtained by giving the stu- 
dents time and opportunity to do regular 
pastoral work during their course of study. 
We have no recitations from Friday evening 
till Tuesday morning. Students are not paid 
to study, but for the work done during these 
three days every week. The population is 
so dense around the centers of our training- 
schools that hundreds of villages can be 
reached within a radius of a half day's walk. 
Even though the differences of .dialect did 
not make it imperative that at least four 
training-schools be operated in this territory, 
the large number of young men to be taught, 
and the evangelistic work in connection with 
each institution, would make it necessary to 
have several different centers for these 
schools. This work of the students is not 
67 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

haphazard^ open-air preaching. In every 
case there is already a small group of pro- 
fessing Christians who meet for instruction 
and worship in a regular place, often the 
house of the leading members. The class is 
part of the nearest circuit, and is carefully 
supervised by a competent preacher-in- 
charge. To locate the training of all these 
nine hundred in one place would make it im- 
possible to give work to all, for the villages 
with such openings are not sufficiently numer- 
ous within walking distance of any one cen- 
ter. 

But the dialects are prohibitive of only 
one school in Fukien. In time the students 
from other sections could learn the new dia- 
lect for purposes of recitation, but few of 
them would be able to speak without a brogue 
that would betray their rural nativity and 
cause embarrassment to the speaker and 
amusement to the hearer. Already there are 
two such schools well organized and doing 
indispensable service, at Foochow and Hing- 
hua respectively, while a good beginning has 
68 



Principles Applied 

been made at Ingchung and one is about 
to be started at longbing. There are nearly 
one hundred students in these schools; but 
the line of campaign calls for the increase of 
these students for ten 3"ears at the rate of 
eighty per annum, above losses by gradua- 
tion and other causes. Plainly there must be 
a large, well organized, liberally supported 
system of preparatory schools to feed our 
Biblical or theological training-schools, or 
one of two equally undesirable situations will 
result: either the buildings will be nearly 
empty, or they will be filled by lov/ering the 
standard of entrance to a point that means 
failure for the future Church. 

Nevertheless, we must reckon that an aver- 
age of at least cne-third of these embryo 

Raw evangelists will have had little more 
Material than an ordinary Chinese educa- 
tion before coming to the school. They have 
been brought up in the villages. Their op- 
portunities have been lim.ited, many of them 
having passed the age of elementary school- 
ing before becoming Christians. Yet five 
69 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

years of careful training will develop hun- 
dreds of such men into splendid workers. In 
the early part of our period more than half 
of these Biblical students will be of this class ; 
but the aim should be to reduce the propor- 
tion as rapidly as possible and fill up the 
quota with young men taught in our Chris- 
tian schools from childhood. 

Let us consider the resources required for 

such a group of training-schools. We have 

found an average allowance of 

Theolog- thirty dollars (gold) a year suffi- 

ical cient for each student. If this is 
Training 

not enough, the contributions of 

the members of the churches which they serve 
might be drawn upon to cover the deficit. 
This would call for a gradual increase of 
expenditure for the support of student 
preachers till at the end of ten years it 
reached twenty-seven thousand dollars. The 
teaching staff, other than the foreign mis- 
sionaries, would need to be the very best ma- 
terial available. It must be well paid. Part 
of these Chinese teachers should be educated 
70 



Principles Applied 

abroad, and others given post-graduate work 
at a high-grade, central, Theological Semi- 
nary, taught by a picked staff of foreign 
missionaries. Our Church should establish 
such a school immediately or unite with other 
missions in so doing. Our Fukien training- 
schools would require from forty to sixty 
Chinese teachers, and their support would 
cost not less than nine thousand dollars a 
year at the end of ten years. To this add 
four thousand dollars for buildings and sun- 
dries each year, and we have an annual ex- 
penditure of forty thousand dollars for this 
class of schools, when the full quota of stu- 
dents is reached. 

From whence will come all these theo- 
logues? is a question that calls for our most 

careful consideration. No one 
Colleges 

familiar with the facts would put 

a college diploma as a universal entrance re- 
quirement. That would shut out great num.- 
bers of young men who, with careful train- 
ing, will become very useful and who mani- 
festly are called of God to the work of the 
71 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ministry. Indeed, such a standard is not set 
even in our theological seminaries in America 
to this day. Nevertheless, our ministry must 
have a considerable proportion of college 
graduates or we can not expect Christianity 
to dominate and lead the nation. All other 
professions have amongst them college-bred 
men. So must the Christian ministry, or it 
will rank before the world as an inferior call- 
ing. But this is not the most serious con- 
sequence. The work of the Christian teacher 
and preacher calls for the highest intellectual 
equipment. A good proportion of college 
graduates among any group of preachers 
tends to raise the standard of culture among 
them all. It stimulates the less fortunate to 
greater diligence in study. The Fukien 
Methodist missionaries think that it should 
be the aim of the missionary managers to 
make it possible for at least one-third of the 
Chinese pastors and evangelists to be college 
graduates. Probably this proportion could 
not be attained in the immediate future, but 
it should be reached long before the end of 
72 



PiiiNCiPi.ES Applied 

the generation. This calls for a yearly aver- 
age of fifty college graduates finishing their 
course in theology and going out into the 
white harvest field. To do this, we must count 
upon sixty or more young men graduating 
every year from the colleges and entering the 
theological schools. It is neither possible nor 
desirable to conduct colleges for the sole pur- 
pose of preparing preachers. If half of all 
the graduates go into Christian work of some 
kind, and if two-thirds of this half, or one- 
third of the entire number, enter the ministry, 
we should be doing very well indeed. To 
maintain this average, the spiritual life of 
the schools would need to be kept at a high 
level all the time, while deep, powerful, Pen- 
tecostal revivals should be frequent. The 
missionaries must have ^'callous knees" and 
shining faces if such large numbers of their 
pupils, like young Moses, turn from the al- 
lurements of worldly honors and wealth ap- 
parently within their grasp, "esteeming the 
reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
treasures of Egypt," and give themselves to 
73 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the moral and spiritual regeneration of their 
nation. 

It is at this point in our scheme of evan- 
gelization that we can not fail to realize that 
no merely mechanical computation of money 
and men can cover the conditions. That 
might be sufficient if we set out simply to 
tell all the world the story of the Cross. 
Even to repeat it to each one fifty or a hun- 
dred times, given the missionaries and their 
support, wdth a daily routine for a certain 
number of years, it could be done. But our 
budget fails us when we come face to face 
with these bright, cultured, ambitious, young 
men in the colleges our money has built and 
our labor developed. Who is sufficient for 
these things? How can we secure the re- 
sponse to Jehovah's call, '^Whom shall I 
send? and who will go for us?" Certainly 
they will not say, "Here am I; send me!" 
until they feel the "woe is me" for the un- 
cleanness of lips and mind and heart; not 
until the "live coal from off the altar" has 
purged away the dross can there be any hope 
74 



Principles Applied 

of securing these splendid young men whom 
we so covet for this service. We are told, 
''Let every one go or send," and it is well 
said; but let no sender think that he has 
done his full part in sending, and no goer 
in going, if there is no fervent, prevailing 
prayer. Prayerless giving will never evan- 
gelize the world, no matter how great the 
treasures poured out. 

To graduate classes of one hundred and 
eighty would require at least one thousand 
students in the four college classes. Again 
it is clear that it is not practicable to try to 
do all this work in one institution. The 
freshman class would have at least three hun- 
dred members. No such classes can be 
handled with the best results even in America ; 
and in China, with modern methods of in- 
struction in their infancy, to attempt such 
centralization, we believe, would insure fail- 
ure, even from an educational standpoint. 
But the variet}^ of dialects and difficulties of 
travel naturally force the dividing of our 
prospective thousand college students into at 
75 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

least four institutions, where the work can be 
done far more thoroughly, and no more ex- 
pensively, than in one big unwieldy body. 

The cost of these colleges might run into 
the hundred thousand, but it is not here pro- 
Cost of posed to attempt more than the 
Colleges minimum necessary for our object. 
The foreign teachers are provided for in the 
foreign mission staff; but these can not do 
anything approaching all the teaching. This 
must be done very largely by highly trained 
Chinese teachers. The students who are able 
to do so should pay tuition ; but a high fee, 
covering the bulk of the cost, is prohibitive 
for the great body of Chinese Christian 
young men. To shut them out defeats our 
chief aim, namely, the education of Chinese 
evangelists. Indeed, the cost of food and 
sundries is more than the average Chinese 
Christian father can meet for Hs sons after 
they are grown. If our Christian young 
men flock to college, we must pave the way 
and open wide the door. This is done in one 
of two ways, or by a mixture of both: (1) 
■ 76 



Principles Applied 

cash help, or free board, is given to those 
who are unable to pay; or (2) needy students 
may earn their way in whole or in part by 
w^orking several hours each day in an indus- 
trial department of the school. In Fukien 
we have preferred this latter method, and it 
has been tested until we know what can be 
done and how to do it. An average of ten 
dollars per student each year, chiefly for 
renewing and enlarging plant and for work- 
ing capital, will keep weaving plants going 
for a thousand students. This would require 
ten thousand dollars annually. An equal sum 
w^ould be needed, in addition to tuition, for 
Chinese teachers. Add eight thousand dol- 
lars a year for property and equipment, and 
we should have, outside of support of foreign 
missionary teachers, a total of twenty-eight 
thousand dollars. 

The middle schools or academies, where all 
these students would prepare for college, 
Acad- would need to be most carefully 
emies conducted. At least a dozen cen- 
ters should be occupied. With a three years' 
Ti 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

course, graduating annually as many as 
seven hundred from all the schools, these 
academies would require a total enrollment of 
about three thousand, for the shrinkage from 
year to year is almost certain to be large. 
Not many more than half of the graduates 
from these schools could be relied upon to go 
to college or seminary. Three hundred to 
college would be doing very well. There 
would be also a group who are too advanced 
in years to take the college course, but who 
would make useful preachers after a thor- 
ough training in the seminary. From these 
we would hope to secure the second best third 
of our one hundred and fifty new recruits to 
the ministry each year. The cost per student 
for the academies, including industrial work 
and teachers, may be put safely at half that 
of the college, or at ten dollars each, making 
thirty thousand dollars, which, with an addi- 
tional twelve thousand for plant and equip- 
ment, gives an ultimate annual expenditure 
for middle schools of forty-two thousand dol- 
lars. 

78 



Principles Applied 

The higher education of women and girls 
is an equally important item with that which 

we have been discussing. It does 
Educa- not seem necessary, however, to go 

into so close an analysis of this 
branch of the work as we have given above. 
The education of girls is, in some respects, 
more expensive than that of boys, — self-sup^ 
port receipts being less. On the other hand, it 
will be quite impossible, during this generation 
at least, to keep so large a proportion of 
our girls for as long a course as we plan here 
for their brothers. It is thought that if we 
have one college for women well patronized, 
we shall be doing very well; but there are 
many boarding-schools, and their work is 
indispensable; so is that of the schools for 
training Bible-women. The total estimate 
given above for the higher education of boys 
and men, exclusive of cost of foreign teachers, 
is one hundred and ten thousand dollars per 
annum. If the similar schools for women 
have eighty thousand dollars, it is probable 
that the work would be amply provided for. 
79 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

The elementary education for both boys 

and girls need not be separated in our esti- 

„, mates, as the children up to twelve 

Elemen- ' f 

tary Edu- years of age may read in the same 
schools. However, the higher ele- 
mentary education for girls must be given in 
separate schools, and is provided for in the 
above-mentioned boarding-schools for girls. 
The day schools open a vast opportunity for 
those who will enter in. Already our Meth- 
odist Fukien missions have the largest and 
most successful system of such schools in 
China, and they can be developed rapidly and 
to an almost unlimited extent. With normal 
schools at convenient centers to train teachers, 
this work will spread more rapidly than any 
other, for the raw material is all about us. 
The 266 schools with 5,206 pupils, which we 
now have, in ten years might become fifteen 
hundred or two thousand schools with forty- 
five to sixty thousand pupils. These would 
feed the higher schools so that in time the 
above paper sketch would become a reality. 
The average cost of one of these schools is 
80 



Principles Applied 

put by Rev. G. S. Miner, superintendent of 
the Foochow system, and Mr. F. H. Trimble, 
in charge of the Hinghua schools, at forty 
dollars a year. This would also cover the 
cost of Normal training for teachers. Here 
is another item of, say, seventy thousand 
dollars a year, as the maximum at the end 
of the first decade. 

V. Evangelistic Work. 

Doubtless the reader is wondering, "Where 
does ^evangelization' come into this scheme?" 
We admit that the direct outlay for evangel- 
istic work is but a small fraction of our 
estimate of the total cost to the home 
Churches. Our basis for this position is the 
experience of the past, and especially the 
present facts. We may be sure that Chinese 
preachers will not reach their highest effi- 
ciency while they are supported by foreign 
funds. Human nature is built that way. We 
have no time to quarrel with Dame Nature. 
Our King's business requires too much haste 
for that. Moreover, it is found that the 
6 81 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

most thoroughly organized Chinese Churches 

very largely support their own pastors. 

In the paper on "The Chinese Church/' 

presented to the China Centenary Conference 

« ,, „ by the Chairman of that Commit- 

Self-Sup- '^ 

port in tee. Dr. J. C. Gibson, of the Eng- 
lish Presbyterian Mission of Swa- 
tow, South China, a statement of the self- 
support of the Swatow Church is given, the 
summary of which is as follows: 

"The table given above shows the actual 
working out in detail for the year 1905 of 
the plan sketched on pp. 14 to 16 of the 
paper, in an actual Church of seventy-three 
congregations, with 2,773 communicants. 
Thus, of twelve pastorates, six are self-sup- 
porting, and aid-giving to the amount in 
all of $443. This sum is handed over to the 
Mission as a free gift in aid of support of 
preachers and teachers in weaker congrega- 
tions. Of this amount, $177 goes to balance 
the deficit in the other pastorates, and the 
residue, amounting to $266, goes to support 
preachers and teachers in stations under the 
82 



Principles Applied 

care of the Mission and not yet under Chinese 
pastorates. One pastorate. No. 4, is self- 
supporting, but neither gives nor receives 
aid, while the remaining five receive aid to 
the amount in all of $177. Of the other 
forty stations, only three were aid-giving to 
the amount of $74, while thirty-seven were 
aid-receiving to the amount of $1,609. Thus 
the whole received aid to the net amount of 
$1,535, and this, less the $266 of aid from 
excess over self-support of the pastorates, 
left the whole net charge on the Mission 
$1,269. The total cost of salaries for the 
whole staff of Chinese ministers, preachers, 
and teachers, was $6,278, of which the Chi- 
nese Church provided $5,009, or eighty per 
cent, leaving only $1,270, or twenty per cent, 
to be borne by mission funds. ^'^ 

The following is a quotation from the 

minutes of the Hinghua Conference 

of 1906. "In contributions for 

Pastoral Support and Home Missions the ad- 

5 The money in these reports is all in Mexican or silver 
dollars. One dollar equals about fifty cents American 
currency. 

83 



The Cost of Christian CoNauEST 

vance is about the same as it has been for 
four or five years past. Not a spurt, but 
steady growth, is the surest progress. Re- 
ports from the three districts show: 

Pastoral Support, $4,077 94 Gain this year, $519 92 
Home Missions, 4,531 S6 Gain this year, 421 17 



Total Eeceipts, $8,609 80 Total gain, $941 09 

A careful study of these figures brings out 
the important fact that these three districts 
have only to make up their minds to do it, 
and they will be practically self-supporting, 
so far as pastors are concernedj this next 
year. There are eighty-six preachers of all 
grades, and twelve student-pastors supported 
by the Hinghua City circuit. The entire 
amount of salaries of all the^e preachers on 
the three districts last year, exclusive of three 
presiding elders and student preachers, other 
than those supported by Hinghua City 
charge, was $9,165; total receipts for Pas- 
toral Support and Home Missions were 
$8,609; leaving a shortage of only $556/' 
There are several districts in the Foochow 
84 



Principles Applied 

Conference that are self-supporting so far 
as their preachers are concerned, notably the 
work in charge of Rev. H. R. Caldwell, in 
Hokchiang. The missions centering about 
Amoy have been noted long for their very 
liberal giving, and they support all their 
settled pastors and ma-ny of their evangelists 
as well. It is reasonable to expect that this 
liberality will increase rather than diminish. 
With the contemplated increase in educa- 
tional work, resulting in a correspondingly 
better qualified ministry, it is practically cer- 
tain that the self-support will greatly ad- 
vance both actually, and proportionately to 
the foreign funds used in this way. 

However, there is need for a fund for this 
purpose, in order that when new places are 

to be opened, the evangelists may 
Ngw 
Work ^^^ be wholly dependent for sup- 

^^A^d^^^ port upon the gifts of raw in- 
quirers just out of heathenism. 
When this is the case, experience has shown 
that these uninstructed people are likely to 
bring pressure to bear upon their pastor to 
85 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

help them In pohtical or other matters which 
are not in his sphere, and the results are sure 
to be disastrous to the future development of 
the work in that region. While no rule can 
be laid down for all stations, yet it is prob- 
able that, with the above outlined develop- 
ment of the work of education and training, 
the average station would become self-sup- 
porting in the fifth year. If the one hundred 
and fifty new recruits from the schools going 
to the ministry every year are aided at the 
rate of sixty dollars each the first year, forty 
dollars the second, and twenty dollars the 
third, we should have an annual expenditure 
of eighteen thousand dollars and still have 
tvv o thousand, out of a total for this purpose 
of twenty thousand, to be used in the fourth 
year where needed. To this add five thou- 
sand a year for moving expenses of preach- 
ers, and an equal sum for support of presiding 
elders, and we have thirty thousand dollars a 
year for evangelistic work. 

Another important feature of this line of 
work is the building of village churches and 
86 



Principles Applied 

parsonages. Generally a new place is opened 
by using for worship the large central room 

Ch h ^^ ^^^ leading family's residence. 

Exten- Sometimes a poor, damp, dark place 
is rented for a while. As the 
work grows there is felt the need of a better 
and larger place of worship. If the people 
build unaided, usually the house will be too 
small for future growth, or they will leave 
it unfinished. It is economy to aid them to 
build for the future. To put up one hundred 
new chapels a year with an average grant-in- 
aid of three hundred dollars, would double 
our other item for evangelistic work, or make 
sixty thousand in aJl. The chapel fund may 
be judiciously used as a gentle stimulus to 
self-support by offering to aid such places 
as will assume the entire support of their 
pastors. 

Another twenty thousand should be added 
for the partial support of Bible-women. 

Bible- Gradually self-support should take 
Women ^.j^^ place of this fund, as it has 
done with the pastoral support; but this has 
87 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

not yet seemed practicable. The Bible-women 
are not supposed to receive anything but for 
their own personal needs, while pastors must 
earn the cost of living for their entire fam- 
ilies ; so that the allowance for a Bible-woman 
is only about one-fourth or one-third of the 
expense of a pastor. Much of this work 
among women must be done as a labor of 
love, without pay, by the educated wives of 
our pastors and teachers. 

This gives a total for direct evangelistic 
work of eighty thousand, of which it is pro- 
T t lA vided that thirty thousand should 
parently go into houses of worship. This 
is about ten per cent of the total 
proposed expenditure, and seems to be dis- 
proportionately small ; but there are many 
missions in China now where this ratio is ap- 
proximately maintained and the work pros- 
pers accordingly. If the rapid increase of 
foreign expenditure in these fields reduces 
the spirit of self-help that has been engen- 
dered, the advance will not be an unmixed 
blessing. One of the most difficult of all the 
88 



Principles Applied 

problems for the missionary when funds for 
his work are greatly multiplied, will be to 
use the money without abusing it. No 
greater disaster could happen to the work of 
evangelization than that the Chinese ministry 
should become parasites fed from a plethoric 
foreign crib. It is because the missionaries 
are keenly alive to this danger that they place 
such a small proportion of the amount of 
the budget under this caption. 

Doubtless this estimate for evangelistic 

work would be insufficient for many fields; 

but, on the other hand, there are 

ment to several items in this Fukien budget 

Various ^^^^ would be excessive for not a 
Fields 

few countries. For example: the 

Indian government gives large grants to mis- 
sion schools and colleges, thus cheapening the 
educational work for the missionary societies. 
Our Fukien estimate would leave here an 
excess which could be applied to the evan- 
gelistic work; for the majority of the con- 
verts in India are much poorer than those 
in China, and self-support is proportionately 
89 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

more difficult. Or take Japan: medical mis- 
sion work seems to have had its day, and to 
be no longer needed, being provided for by 
government. Elementary schools are also 
supported everywhere by public funds. In 
this way these items in our estimate are set 
free for use in evangelistic work or wherever 
most needed. It is not contended that the 
various items of our calculations are of uni- 
versal application, but it is believed that in 
most mission fields the total amount would 
be found sufficient, and details could be ar- 
ranged in each case to suit local conditions. 

VI, Works of Mercy. 

It has been said of mercy that "it drop- 
peth as the gentle rain from heaven." In 
seeking to conquer the wilderness, all labor is 
lost without the rain. It was by His works 
of mercy that Christ softened the hearts of 
the multitudes for the seed of the Word. 
Human nature is not essentially different to- 
day. We believe it will be a fatal blunder 
90 



Principles Applied 

to plan such an aggressive campaign in the 
educational and evangelistic lines of work as 
we have here outlined, without making a cor- 
responding increase in those philanthropies 
which show the Christ-life in the most un- 
questionable way. If all effort is put into 
building up a powerful Christian constitu- 
ency, it will tend to confirm the suspicion, 
already so general in the Chinese mind, that 
foreigners are in China primarily for politi- 
cal aggrandizement. To counteract this se- 
rious drawback, if for no higher motive, any 
large increase in the evangelistic and educa- 
tional forces should be accompanied by a 
corresponding multiplication of hospitals, of 
orphanages, and the founding of asylums for 
the unfortunate classes, the blind, the in- 
curables, the lepers, the insane. These insti- 
tutions present a concrete and unanswerable 
argument to the suspicions and criticisms of 
all classes. For the territory and population 
under consideration it is thought that at 
least twenty hospitals are needed; already 
91 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

there are four general hospitals and five for 
women, either operating or in process of 
building. Exclusive of physicians, who are 
provided for in the estimate for missionaries, 
a current expense of two thousand dollars a 
year for each plant seems to be a reasonable 
sum, or a total of forty thousand dollars 
gold. Of asylums of various kinds certainly 
an equal number would be required and at 
no less cost; or a total, under this class of 
expenditure, of eighty thousand dollars. 

VII. Literature. 

Literature in great quantities, and of the 
best quality, must be sold cheap and every- 
where. It seems like too smaJi a sum to put 
down ten thousand dollars annually for each 
of these three sections of two and a half 
million people, or a total of thirty thousand 
dollars a year for this supremely important 
agency; but the books need not be given 
away, and in time they should pay the cost 
in sales and even become a source of profit. 

We have estimated for a population of 
92 



Principles Applied 

seven and one-half millions, gradually to in- 

Resume crease to the following maximum, 

in ten years: 

I. Foreign Missionaries. (Currency all gold.) 

Families 100 at $2,000 $200,000 

Unmarried ..100 at 1,000 100,000 

$300,000 

11. Education, 

For Men, Theological $40,000 

Colleges, 28,000 

Middle Schools 42,000 

For Women 80,000 

Elementary (Boys and Girls).... 70,000 

-^ 260,000 

III. Evangelistic "Work. 

New Stations $30,000 

Chapels 30,000 

Among Women , 20,000 



IV. Works of Mercy. 

Hospitals 20 at $2,000 $40,000 

Asylums and Orphan- 
ages 20 at 2,000 40,000 



80,000 



80,000 



V. Literature 30,000 



Grand Total $750,000 

The approprir.tions to the Foochow and 

Hinghua Missions of the General Society 

and the Woman's Board, for 1907, 
Compar- ' ' 

ison with amount to $93,320 ; there are more 
or less regular special gifts and 
contingent appropriations that swell this by 
93 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

another twenty-five to thirty thousand dol- 
lars, making a total expenditure of about 
one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, 
or about one-sixth of the ultimate amount 
needed, according to our estimate. To reach 
the proposed maximum of three quarters of 
a million dollars in ten years, it would be 
necessary steadily every year to increase 
the present expenditure by from sixty to 
sixty-five thousand dollars, or fifty per cent 
of the entire amount now used annually in 
these missions. "Impossible !" cries a chorus 
of voices. Perhaps it is, — but the leaders of 
the Laymen's Movement have not asked us 
to estimate what we think the Church is 
likely to do in this generation; but what it 
would have to do in order to evangelize the 
world in the next thirty-three years. Before 
we run up the white flag, let us first see 
clearly what the campaign calls for. 



94 



Chapter IV. 

A WIDER APPLICATION. 

The trio of missionaries at Foochow had 

been brought back to the present tense and 

-^ r^ .^ immediate duties by the church 
The Unit '^ 

of Calcu- bells, the sum total had been 
reached, and they had gone their 
several ways, when a thought flashed upon 
one of them that caused him to assemble an 
adjourned meeting at once, to call attention 
to the fact: 

"Our estimate of a maximum annual ex- 
penditure of seven hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars for the evangelization of seven 
and one-half million people is just ten cents 
per capita per annum." 

This unit of calculation is the simplest pos- 
sible to apply to any given field: Annually 
increase by one cent per capita of the popu- 
lation until ten cents per annum is reached^ 
95 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

then continue that rate for the remainder of 

the generation. 

One month after this breakfast conference 

in June, 1907, there fell into the hands of 

one of the three a copy of the re- 
A Re- 
markable po^^t of the "Fourteenth Confer- 

Agree- ^^^^^ q£ Foreig^n Mission Boards of 
ment , ^ 

the United States and Canada, 

1907." He eagerly turned to the paper and 
discussion on "Forces Needed for the World's 
Evangelization." The response of the Secre- 
tary of the Missionary Society of the United 
Presbyterian Church gives its estimated mis- 
sionary responsibility in three fields as fol- 
lows : "India, five millions ; Egypt, eight mil- 
lions ; and the Soudan, one million ; a total of 
fourteen million people. To evangelize this 
section of the field they would need four 
hundred and ninety additional missionaries. 
In their (the Board's) judgment these should 
be sent in the next ten years, or forty-nine 
each year. This would require an additional 
offering of a million dollars per annum, their 
present contribution being two hundred and 
96 



A Wider Application 

sixty thousand dollars.^ When this Society 
adds one million to its present expenditure, to 
evangelize fourteen million people, it will be 
using exactly nine cents per capita per an- 
num. There is a remarkable agreement be- 
tween these two wholly independent estimates, 
especially when we remember that the fields 
considered are so widely separated. 

We have analj^zed with considerable care 
the Fukien field. With our limited knowl- 
edge, it is not practicable here to 
Method- S^ ^^^^ ^ similar detailed study of 

ist Epis- each of the other three sections that 
copal Re- 
. sponsi- the Methodist Episcopal Church is 

Ch^a" ^^^ occupying in China, but we 
may venture upon a rough outline 
without presumption, having no intention of 
its being more than suggestive. 

The North China Conference, in the met- 
ropolitan province of Chihli, with headquar- 
North ^^I's in Peking, strongly occupies a 
China strategic position in the Empire. 
In addition to its work in that province, 

6 Page 42. 
7 97 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

many years ago a remarkable providence led 
to the opening of a district in the Province 
of Shantung. Chihli Province claims a popu- 
lation of 20,937,000. This is about two mil- 
lion less than Fukien, but, as one district em- 
braces a section of Shantung, the total popu- 
lation of the two fields may be reckoned the 
same. If the Methodist Episcopal responsi- 
bility be counted at a ratio similar to the 
Fukien field, we would have seven and one- 
half million people for the North China Con- 
ference to evangelize. 

The Central China Mission is spread out 
in three provinces — Anhwei, Kiangsu, and 
Central Kiangsi — with an aggregate popu- 
^^'^^ lation of 64,182,000. As there are 
fully five hundred and fifty missionaries in 
these provinces besides our own fifty-four, we 
form less than ten per cent of the entire num- 
ber. For us to assume responsibility for 
ten million of these people, or more than 
fifteen per cent, would seem to be measuring 
up to our whole duty. For many years an 
^'enabling act" has been granted by the Gen- 
98 



A Wider Application 

eral Conference to divide this mission into 
two, but there has been failure to agree upon 
lines of separation. Undoubtedly this ad- 
justment of the work will be made in due 
time. If each of the resulting missions would 
concentrate upon a definite territory of about 
five million each, it is the writer's conviction 
that the results would be far more satisfac- 
tory than they have ever been in the past. 

The West China Mission is the Province of 
Szechuen, with its population of nearly sixty- 
West ^^^^ million — an empire in itself. 
China Here "our Conference embraces 
over twenty million people."^ Our thirty mis- 
sionaries form about twelve per cent of the 
Protestant forces of the province. It hardly 
seems like a fair division of responsibility for 
one-third of the population to be assigned to 
one-eighth of the missionaries. Suppose we 
turn over a part of this enormous population 
to our Canadian Methodist friends, who are 
alongside of us, and who are strongly re-en- 
forcing this, their only mission in China? 

7" China and Methodism," Bishop Bashford, p. 79. 

LOFC. 99 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

If we hold fifteen million, we would still have 

twenty-two per cent of the entire population, 

or nearly double our pro rata share. 

With this outline, we would have for our 

Summary China field: 

Foochow , 5,000,000 

Hinghua 2,500,000 

North China 7,500,000 

Central China 10,000,000 

West China 15,00C»,000 

Total 40,000,000 

In the above-mentioned "Report of the 
Conference of Foreign Mission Boards" 
p u (P^g^ ^^) ^^^ fi^d a most interest- 
terianEs- ing statement from the Board of 
Foreign Missions of the Presby- 
terian Church (Northern) of a careful esti- 
mate of its responsibility for the world's 
evangelization. In this table their share of 
China is put at exactly the number we have 
calculated for the Methodist Episcopal 
Church — forty million. Since the communi- 
cants of the Methodist Episcopal Church are 
more than double those of the Presbyterians, 
even after the union with the Cumberland 
100 



A Wider Application - 

Presbyterians, it does not seem like presump- 
tion for us to fix our responsibility at as 
large a figure for China's millions as that 
splendid missionary Church has assumed. On 
the other hand, it would appear to be exces- 
sive for us to claim a larger share in China 
than tney, since, according to the Centenary 
statistics, they have two hundred and sixty- 
five missionaries in the China field, as against 
our one hundred and ninety-six, or thirty-five 
. per cent more. If China's population Is cor- 
rectly estimated at four hundred and thirty- 
three and one-half million,^ this would give 
to the Methodist Episcopal Church about 
one-eleventh of the whole. It seems evident, 
then, that the fields already occupied are as 
large a share of the responsibility for the 
evangelization of China as we can fairly 
claim, in view of the splendid work and re- 
sources of the other Protestant Churches al- 
ready working here. Let us spend our whole 
strength in cultivating the magnificent in- 
heritance that is ours, rather than in dissipat- 

8 statesman's Year Book, 1907, p. 810. 

101 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ing our energies by striving to enter new 
fields, however needy they may seem to be, 
while great sections, for which we alone are 
responsible, lie practically untouched. 

What expenditure of workers and money 
does this responsibility call for? At ten 

cents per capita per annum it will 
for Our require four million dollars gold. 
China rjpj^^ £^^21 quota of missionaries, at 

one for every twenty-five thousand 
of population, would be sixteen hundred, one- 
third of whom should be married men. The 
present staffs of two hundred and fourteen,^ 
or thirteen and three-eighths per cent of the 
proposed ultimate number, would not fill the 
vacancies by death or illness, in the sending 
of such a large number during a decade. To 
reach this maximum, allowing twenty per 
cent for losses, would require sending out 
fifty-seven families and as many unmarried 
women, or a total of one hundred and sev- 
enty-one new missionaries annually for a 

9 According to Bishop Basliford's " Cliina and Method- 
ism," (p. 107,) there were 214 men and women In 1906. 

103 



A Wider Application 

decade. The present expenditure for these 
missions, from both the General Society and 
Woman's Board and special gifts, exclusive of 
self-support on the field, is about three hun- 
dred and twenty thousand dollars. If the 
estimate for Fukien be applied to the whole 
China field, it would call for an annual in- 
crease of expenditure for ten successive years 
equal to the entire amount now received from 
all sources and fifty thousand more, or three 
hundred and seventy thousand dollars annu- 
ally. This mere statement shows plainly 
that, if the correctness of our estimate is 
even remotely approximate, then the evan- 
gelization of our Methodist Episcopal China 
field in this generation is altogether hopeless 
unless the Church as a whole assumes a radi- 
cally different attitude toward this work, and 
an entirely new point of view be reached by 
the average occupant of both pulpit and 
pew. 



103 



Chapter V. 

WORLD-WIDE APPLICATION. 

What is the probable field of responsibility 
for the Methodist Episcopal Church in all 
lands? It is not at all within our purpose 
to make any detailed estimate for each coun- 
try. The data for this are not at hand; 
•but a comparative estimate may be made that 
ought to give us a minimum below which we 
should not dare to go. In the oft-quoted 
paper upon the "Forces Needed for the 
World's Evangelization," read before the 
above-mentioned Conference of Foreign Mis- 
sion Boards, January, 1907, several of the 
Churches of the northern states of America 
give definite figures of what they consider 
their missionary responsibility. It is of deep 
interest to note how these several fields for 
104 



World-Wide Application 

conquest compare in numbers with the com- 
municants of the respective Churches, or, in 
other words, how many people each American 
Christian means, in Christ's name, to evan- 
gelize through the medium of the missionary 
organization of his Church/^ 

The American Baptist Missionary Union, 
with a constituency of 1,070,206, considers 

its responsibility to be eiechty mil- 
One Shall ^ I . 
Chase — lions, or seventy-nve persons tor 

^'^^j, each communicant. The Presby-' 

terian Society (Northern) which, 

combined with the Cumberland Presbyterians, 

numbers 1,255,274, assumes responsibility 

for one hundred millions, or seventy-nine for 

each American Christian in their Church. 

The American Board of Commissioners for 

Foreign Missions declares: "For years we 

have considered our distinct responsibility to 

be for seventy-five million souls, and we have 

a separate estimate for each." Yet the Con- 

10 The statistics for membership are from, the Metho- 
dist Year Book for 1906, p. 211. The figures are all for the 
year 1904, as these are the latest available data for all the 
Churches. 

105 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

gregationalist Churches report a membership 
of only 667,951 ; which gives to each com- 
municant an individual responsibility for one 
hundred and twelve souls. While the "no- 
blest Roman of them all," the little giant 
that is called the United Presbyterian 
Church, which gives for foreign missions 
more than two dollars per member, with a 
membership of 121,328, heroically under- 
takes to evangelize fourteen millions, or one 
hundred and fifteen for each American mem- 
ber. Are these Missionary Boards made up 
of harebrained enthusiasts? They number 
amongst their secretaries and officers such 
men as Dr. Arthur Judson Brown, Mr. Rob- 
ert E. Speer, Dr. Henry C. Mabie, Hon. 
Samuel B. Capen, Dr. James L. Barton, Mr. 
J. Campbell White, and others, who stand in 
the very first rank among the students of 
mission problems and executors of mission 
work. With such examples before him, the 
writer would beg to put the minimum figure 
for the responsibility of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, with its 2,847,932 communi- 
106 



World-Wide Application 

cants, at one hundred and fifty millions. This 
would represent only fifty-three for each 
American communicant. This is less than 
half of the ratio assumed by the Congrega- 
tionalists and United Presbyterians, and 
about two-thirds of that undertaken by the 
Presbyterians and Baptists. Evidently, if 
our sister Churches are in earnest in assuming 
these grave responsibilities, the Methodist 
Episcopal Church will have to accept some 
such figure as one hundred and fifty millions, 
or this generation will see us retire from our 
primacy among the Protestant denominations 
of the world. 

Without entering into details, a general 
division of this three times fifty millions may 
be put at: 

Eastern Asia (China, Japan, and Korea), 50,000,000 

Southern Asia '. 50,000,000 

Africa, Roman Catholic countries and 

others 50,000,000 

Total 150,000,000 

According to our unit of calculation of ten 
cents per capita per annum, this would call 

107 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

for a maximum expenditure, at the end of ten 

years, of five million dollars for each of these 

_^ three sections, or a total of fifteen 

The 

Money million dollars. The expenditure 
of the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions for the year 1906, for the foreign work, 
with special gifts and the a^ppropriations of 
the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 
aggregate $1,867,600/^ To reach in ten 
years the ideal herein outlined, we should have 
to multiply present gifts by a very small 
fraction more than eight. 

But the money cost is light compared with 
the precious sons and daughters who must go 

^^ forth from the homes of Meth- 

I ne 

Heaviest odism, if the world is to be con- 
quered for our King. The present 
force, as reported by our missionary office, 
is five hundred men and women, besides two 
hundred and forty-nine missionaries of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. ^^ To 
put one missionary in the field for every 

II Report of Missionary Society for 1906, page 28. 
12 Quoted in '' Report of Boards, etc.," p. 45. 

108 



World-Wide Application 

twenty-five thousand of one hundred and fifty 
million people, we should have to raise this 
seven hundred and forty-nine to six thou- 
sand, or multiply our missionaries by a little 
more than eight, being exactly the same 
figure required for the proposed budget.-^ ^ 
Reckoning twenty per cent for losses, the 
present force would lack four hundred and 
fifty-cne of making up for shrinkage in the 
decade: so that six hundred and forty-five 
new missionaries should be sent out every 
year for ten years, or two hundred and fifteen 
young men and their wives and an equal num- 
ber of unmarried women, in order to meet 
our responsibility upon this basis. Plainly, 
the undertaking is a gigantic one, and well 

13 Note.— Thus our theoretic estimate of the correct 
proportion between money supplies and number of mis- 
sionaries is exactly the same as that of the existing budg- 
ets and the force now on the field; for, to reach the ideal 
maximum of fifteen million dollars annually and six 
thousand missionaries, we multiply by the same figure the 
disbursements for 1906, and the number of missionaries on 
the field that year. This result was entirely unantici- 
pated, and tends strongly to endorse the policy of the 
present management of our two missionary societies, as 
well as to confirm the correctness of these estimates of 
the Fukien missionaries. 

109 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

worthy of the best traditions of Methodism 
in her most heroic days, when Enghsh eight- 
eenth century mobs and the American wil- 
derness were conquered by the quenchless zeal 
of our fathers. 



110 



Chapter VI. 
"WE CAN DO IT, IF WE WILL." 

Doubtless the figures of the preceding 
chapters have impressed the average reader 
that all this discussion simply shows that the 
evangelization of the world in this generation 
is a Quixotic scheme of enthusiasts, and 
wholly outside the sphere of "practical poli- 
tics." Although the occasion of this booklet 
was to endeavor to give a definite answer to 
the question : "What will it cost to evangelize 
in this generation that part of the world for 
which the Methodist Episcopal Church is re- 
sponsible?" yet the other query, "Is it prac- 
ticable?" must be faced, or all our discussion 
will be wasted. 

In considering the feasibility of any such 
extraordinary advance in contributions for 
111 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

foreign missions, two important principles, it 

seems to the writer, must be kept steadily 

in view: 

portant' ^' ^^^ great increase must not 

Prin- jj^ ^f ff^^ f^Q^f Q-f pastoral support 

in the home Churches, The pastors 
who are doing the work should be cared for 
better than ever before. 

2. It must not he at the expense of the 
toork of hom.e missions. Indeed, it is the 
writer's conviction that any such movement 
for the evangelization of the most distant na- 
tions must be accompanied by a correspond- 
ing increase in the equally important task 
of holding the frontiers of the West and of 
Christianizing the hordes of Southern 
Europe, who are jflooding our American 
cities. If America is not held for Christian- 
ity, the world conquest is hopeless. 

Bearing in mind the first of these prin- 

Current ciples, what should we expect from 

Expenses q^j. Church ten years hence for 

support of pastors and current expenses? 

112 



"We Can Do It, If We Will" 

The Methodist Year-Book of 1906 (p. 65) 
gives for the year 1905: 

Ministerial support $13,825,992 

Church Expenses 5,309,927 

Total for 1905 $19,135,919 

Total for 1902^4 16,309,433 

Advance in three years $2,826,486 

Average annual advance 942,162 

In view of the above figures, as the two 
years, 1906 and 1907, have already nearly 
passed, it is ver}^ conservative to put the 
probable gifts of the Church under this head 
for the year 1917, or twelve years from the 
year 1905, at thirty million doUars,^^ and 
this without any special agitation upon the 
subject. The interested parties will see to 
that. 

We have estimated that the foreign mis- 
sionary responsibility of our Church calls 

14 General Minutes, FaU Conferences, 1902, p. 643. 

!.'> Increase for 12 years at $942,162 per annum 

equals $11,305,944 

Add total for 1905 19,135,919 

Total for 1917 at present rate of increase, $30,441,863 
8 113 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

for a maximum of fifteen million dollars ten 

years hence, and a gradual increase during 

the decade up to that figure. How 

ning at about the home mission work ? In 

Jerusa- ^^le following table we have reck- 
lem " ^ 

oned among the home benevolences 

the amount reported for Conference Claim- 
ants. This item is classed with "Min- 
isterial Support" in the official statistics; 
nevertheless, this is regarded by all the people 
as one of the "benevolent collections," and 
any large plan of general advance must em- 
brace this, the worthiest of all claims upon 
the Methodist body. Deaconess Work and 
City Evangelization are also included, 
though no connectional society controls either 
of them ; for they are both home mission work 
of the best type, and must bulk largely in 
any extensive scheme of home mission ex- 
pansion. 

What are we doing now.^ In 1905 there 
were disbursements : 



114 



"We Can Do It, If We Will^' 

i^m- all Missionary Societies ^^^ $2,879,397 

For all other Benevolent Societies ^^ 629,779 

For Conference Claimants ^^ 834,225 

For Deaconess Work^^ 477,587 

For City Evangelization (approximate)^^.... 250,000 

Total $4,570,988 

Of v^hich there vrere disbursements in 

foreign work^^ 1,822,258 

Leaving disbursements in home v^ork $2,748,680 

This is in the ratio of about forty per cent 
for foreign to sixty per cent for home work. 
To equaHze these two classes of mission work, 
it is not here proposed that the home side be 
cut down, but that both be greatly increased, 
gradually bringing the proportion to an even 
fifty per cent for each. Taking our maxi- 
mum estimate of fifteen million dollars for 
foreign evangelization, with an equal amount 
for the home work, we should be giving, ten 
years hence, thirty millions per annum for 
home and foreign benevolences of all kinds : — 
a sum equal to that which we estimate to be 

16 Report of Missionary Society for 1905, p. 25. 

17 Methodist Year Book, 1906, p. 83. 

18 Ibid, p. 65. 

19 Ibid, p. 81. 

20 Ibid, p. 164. 

115 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the minimum we shall be contributing by that 
time for ministerial support and current ex- 
penses. This would give a total of sixty 
million dollars for all purposes given through 
directly Church channels. 

What is the possibility for the realization 

of such a sum? There are two elements in 

Probable ^^^ calculation: (1) How many 

Increase people to give it? (2) What will 

bership be their probable average financial 

inDecade ^bjij^yp Dr. Stephen A. Ford tells 

us: "The total domestic membership at the 
close of 1904 was S^SSl^aSl ; the increase (in 
1905) of 56,225 is therefore a fraction less 
than two per cent."^^ Upon the supposition 
that there is an advance in expenditures for 
home mission work parallel to that proposed 
for foreign missions, certainly we may as- 
sume that the highest annual rate of increase 
in domestic membership of recent years would 
be maintained as an average through the 
decade, or else our labor will be in vain. If 
this rate of increase of two per cent per an- 

21 Methodist Year Book, 1906, p. 36. 
116 



"We Can Do It, If We Will" 

num should continue until 1917, the mem- 
bership in the United States would then reach 
about three million six hundred thousand. 

What will be the probable minimum in- 
come of this Methodist body? Counting an 

- averae^e of three communicants to a 

Income ^ 

by Fam- family, there would be one million 
two hundred thousand families. 
In the "Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, 
September, 1904, Number 54," there is a 
most carefully elaborated report of the aver- 
age income and expenses of 2,567 famihes 
in various sections of the United States, 
wholly from wage-earning classes in indus- 
trial centers. Eighty per cent were renters, 
and the average per cent of total expense 
used for taxes was only three-fourths of one 
per cent. Surely we are safe in saying that 
the average Methodist family will not fall 
below these in wage-earning power. The 
average income of these families from wages 
was $749.50; for practical calculation, we 
may call it $750. As this bulletin was issued 
in 1904, it must have represented the earn- 
117 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ings of these families in 1903. Already wages 
have considerably advanced in the past four 
years. The next ten years almost certainly 
will witness a much greater increase. But 
we propose to figure out the minimum, not 
a possible maximum, so that, taking this 
average, our 1,200,000 Methodist families 
will represent a wage-earning income in 1917 
of nine hundred million dollars. 

But the wage-earning capacity of these 
Methodist families does not represent their 
entire income. The revenue from wealth pos- 
sessed must be added to wage-earning power. 
The American people are the richest in the 
world, and no other country is increasing its 
per capita wealth so rapidly. In 1904 this 
was $1,300. The Census Bureau estimates 
that this figure reaches $1,350 in 1907, or 
an increase of $50 in three years. ^^ It is 
probable that ten years later this per capita 
rate will be at least $1,500. This is for each 
man, woman, and child in the country. Thus 
an average family of five, in the year 1917, 

22 Editorial, Leslie's Weekly, April 25, 1907. 
118 



"We Can Do It, If We Will" 

would represent wealth to the amount of 
$7,500. The Methodist families, with three 
communicants, would average at least five 
members, counting the children. At four per 
cent the average income to each family would 
be $300, and for the 1,200,000 families the 
income from property would be three hun- 
dred and sixty million dollars. Add this to 
the nine hundred millions of wages earned, 
and we have a total of one billion two hundred 
and sixty million dollars. 

It is proposed that, during the next ten 
years, the Church be brought to laying upon 

p God's altar, for the current ex- 

Capita penses of the home Church and for 
the various benevolences, sixty mil- 
lion dollars. This is almost exactly four and 
three-fourths per cent of the estimated in- 
come, or less than one-half of the Old Testa- 
ment minimum of the tithe. This would be 
an average of fifty dollars per family, or 
sixteen and two-thirds dollars per communi- 
cant, which is slightly more than four and 
one-half cents a day. In 1905 we were giv- 
119 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

ing for current expenses, per member (ex- 
clusive of those in foreign lands), six dollars 
and fifty-eight cents ; and one dollar and 
fifty-seven cents additional for benevolences,^^ 
or a total of eight dollars and fifteen cents. 
Hence, to reach the proposed rate of sixteen 
dollars and sixty-seven cents during the dec- 
ade, we would only have to a very little more 
than double our present per capita gifts. 
Certainly this is by no means a discreditable 
showing. It represents much of as Christlike 
self-sacrifice as can be found anywhere. We 
glory in being a Church for and of the 
"common people." May we ever be thus like 
our Master! Undoubtedly our per capita 
financial ability is less than that of several of 
the other great denominations. The mag- 
nificent achievements in liberality in the past 
are a prophecy of the far greater triumphs 
of the near future. In view of the rapid 
increase in wealth and in wages of the whole 
American nation, and of their ability to do 

23 For totals see above pages 113 and 115. Domestic 
membership in 1905 was 2,907,446. 

120 



"We Can Do It, If We Wii.l" 

whatever else they determine upon for the 
good of themselves or of others, it is doubt- 
ful if any will seriously question the propo- 
sition of this chapter: ''We can do it, if we 
wilir 



121 



Chapter VII. 

HOW? 

The skeptical reader's doubt is not in the 
financial ability of the average Methodist to 
give four and one-half cents a day 
We?" but f^^ the progress of the kingdom at 
w^?'' home and abroad. The interroga- 
tion point is placed here: Can the 
three to four million members be induced to 
put their latent ability into concrete execu- 
tion? That is the supreme question in the 
problem of the world's evangelization. It is 
not strictly within the scope of this booklet 
to attempt to solve this doubt. That is for 
the leaders of the Laymen's Movement to 
tell us and to lead the way. However, a sug- 
gestion is here offered in the hope that it 
may not be wholly useless. 
122 



How? 

Without any preconceived planning upon 
the part of those working upon the above 
estimates, the singular coincidence is devel- 
oped that the results call for a division of the 
total contributions for all purposes into equal 
parts: (1) The local Church current ex- 
penses, including ministerial support; (2) 
the total for all benevolent collections. The 
other point to be specially noted is that the 
benevolences are again equally divided : ( 1 ) 
all for various domestic purposes ; ( 2 ) the 
amount called for to evangelize the one hun- 
dred and fifty millions of other lands, which 
we estimate as the minimum missionary re- 
sponsibility of our Church. 

What is needed in order to make such a 
rapid advance in the gifts for Church be- 
nevolences as is here called for? Clearly 
there must be some radically new power put 
into the appeals for these benevolent causes 
or the case is hopeless. With a circulation 
of World-Wide Missions approaching four 
hundred thousand, with a splendid corps of 
Field Secretaries covering the country with 
123 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

missionary conventions, and with unprece- 
dented success in our mission fields to encour- 
age and stimulate giving, the decade ending 
in 1906 has seen an increase of eight hun- 
dred and nine thousand four hundred dollars, 
or onl}^ sixty-four per cent in the Missionary 
Society's income for both home and foreign 
work.^^ These methods have not been fail- 
ures. There has been marvelous success, and 
this success is the foundation upon which any 
new movement must be based; but to mul- 
tiply the present income b}^ eight in the next 
decade something more effective and different 
must be devised. 

The weak spot in all this agitation seems 
to be that it depends too exclusively upon 
J, . arousing sentiment by special pleas, 
for a New It seeks support for each particular 
line of philanthrop}^ by an appeal 
for it. The pleading being eloquent and 
affecting, it is effective, for that time at 
least. The pleader gone, the impulse dies 

24 Eighty-eighth Annual Report of Missionary Society, 
p. 385, 

124 



How? 

down until another comes along to "stir us to 
the depths." All this agitation, in press and 
pulpit, platform and parlor, is essential and 
useful, but if it continues as our main de- 
pendence, there is no good reason to believe 
that the results will meet our requirements 
in the future any more than in the past. It 
seems to the writer that the real trouble with 
our "Church benevolences," that keeps them 
down to less than one-fifth of all our Church 
contributions, is the absence of a lofty ideal 
concerning .them. At best we are expecting 
to make an advance of a per cent; apparently 
few of us have ever thought of multiplying 
our gifts. Now we know that all great 
achievements in this world are preceded by 
great ideals. First the ideal is in the mind 
of a Howard, a Wilberforce, a Lincoln. It 
spreads to others until it takes possession of 
a nation, and the visionary enthusiast of yes- 
terday is the revered prophet and statesman 
of to-day. What is needed is a new ideal, 
not only as to the amount Christians should 
give for the advancement of the kingdom of 
125 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

God among men, though that requires en- 
larging badly enough, but a new standard of 
the proper proportion between the gifts in- 
tended for supplying the giver's own per- 
sonal religious needs and the contributions for 
his needier neighbor. 

In the important matter of stewardship, 

what is a sane and consistent ideal for well- 

A Rea- to-do Christian people ? Aside 

sonable from the question of proportion of 
Ideal for . ... 

Steward- income to be dedicated to Christian 

^ ^P service, what is a reasonable prin- 
ciple upon which a prosperous Christian com- 
munity should divide its giving between its 
own current expenses and the needs of less 
favored people in other parts of its own and 
in foreign lands ? Contributions to the up- 
keep of one's own Church, payment of one's 
own pastor's salary, can scarcely be classed 
as purely altruistic benevolence. The Church 
is no less essential to the civilization of the 
community than the schoolhouse. Remove or 
close up the churches of a town, the value of 
property would drop at once, and business 
126 



How? 

would suffer along with the morals of the 
community. In short, the money contributed 
for one's home Church is essential for the 
temporal as well as spiritual welfare of the 
giver; it is one of the very best business 
investments he can make. There is nothing 
discreditable in this fact. It is a part of the 
divine economy that "godliness is profitable 
unto all things, having promise of the life 
that now. is," as well as of "that which is to 
come." But we are disciples of Him who 
quoted as one of the two chief command- 
ments: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself;" and He gave a new definition of 
"neighbor" which the whole world is gradu- 
ally coming to recognize as the foundation 
of all true civilizatioUo As Christians, then, 
the ideal which we should have before us is 
that: We aim to give as much to help our 
neighbor to obtain the blessings of Chris- 
tianity as we expend to retain them for our- 
selves. Let this simple, and obviously rea- 
sonable, ideal of Christian stewardship be- 
come generally accepted by all Christians, 
127 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

and the problem of the world's evangeliza- 
tion, so far as the financial side of it is con- 
cerned, would be solved at once: for few 
would reduce their subscriptions to their 
home Church in order to increase the benevo- 
lent collections ; rather would they add to the 
''benevolences'' until the two become equal- 
ized. Our suggestion is that our benevolent 
society Boards, General and Annual Confer- 
ences, Laymen's Missionary Movement Con- 
ventions, and other influential bodies place 
before the Church this ideal: ''Let us give 

AS MUCH FOR OUR NEIGHBOR AS WE GIVE FOR 

OURSELVES." Let each member have this as 
the rule for his own giving. Let each pastor 
keep this standard before his people as their 
"reasonable service." With ten years of edu- 
cation, prayer, and victory in the work all 
over the world, is it visionary enthusiasm to 
believe that we may see the consummation of 
our highest hopes in the Methodist hosts lay- 
ing upon God's altar for home and foreign 
missions a sum equal to the anticipated thirty 
128 



How ? 

millions for ministerial support and current 

expenses ? 

Of course many can, and now do, give far 

more for their neighbor than for their home 

Church expenses. The number 

tering would greatly increase with this 

that In- i(Jeal becomines; accepted by the 
creaseth o sr j 

mass of the membership. So, also, 
many wealthy churches would go beyond it. 
Even W'ith the poor, struggling parish on the 
frontier, or in the harder New England or 
Southern field, such an ideal would enlarge 
the heart and vision of pastor and people. 
Let the Church come up to this standard, 
and in 1917 the home mission funds would 
surpass by $1,174,008 the entire amount paid 
by the Church for ministerial support in the 
year 1905. After amply caring for our su- 
perannuates and their widows and orphans, 
greatly strengthening the work among the 
Freedmen, the Sunday-schools, and every 
other home interest, after putting five mil- 
lions into City Evangelization w^ork upon 
9 139 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

the lines so successfully carried on by our 
Wesleyan brethren in England, there still 
would be abundant funds to provide a decent 
support for every Methodist preacher in 
America whose people were unable to raise the 
required amount. To every charge that gen- 
erously divided its income between its own 
expenses and the "benevolences," the Home 
Missionary Society would guarantee that its 
pastor would not suffer thereby, for these 
Home Mission funds would make up the 
deficit of a minimum equitable salary. The 
fearful inequalities now existing amongst us 
would be greatly modified at least, and the 
severest strain upon our itinerant system 
would be immeasurably relieved. 

Then, how reasonable it is that we give for 
our distant neighbor across the sea a sum 
equal to that for our needy brother Amicri- 
can? Indeed, it is so manifestly just that no 
argument seems required for it here. 

It is very questionable whether the multi- 
plicity of collections and number of objects 
before the Church do not really reduce the 
130 



How? 

total amount of contributions. The writer 
believes that much more would be given if a 
constant course of education in the work of 
the world's evangelization at home and 
abroad were kept up by pastors and leaders 
among the laity, apart from collections, and 
one lump sum for benevolences were called 
for, always allowing liberty of individual 
preference for objects, and presenting the 
ideal of each one giving as much for others 
as for himself. 

Is it worth our treasures of gold and of 
our best sons and daughters? Let us cease 
Is It ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ disciples of the Man of 
Worth Calvary that they "will not feel it" 
to give enough to do all they are 
called upon to do. If we do not feel it, we 
will not pray; if we do not pray, our giving 
will be of little worth. Multitudes of Chris- 
tian people to-day are ready to make any 
sacrifice within their power; the question in 
their minds is rather: "Will the outcome jus- 
tify the outlay?" What is a probable re- 
sult, by the year 1940, of the expenditure 
131 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

by American Methodists of ten cents per cap- 
ita per annum in the evangehzation of a 
population in foreign lands of one hundred 
and fifty million souls? In the year 1905 
the foreign membership of our Church in- 
creased ten per cent.^^ This is by no means 
an unusual rate in recent years. The China 
field in the same year added twelve and three- 
tenths per cent to its membership. Admit- 
ting that when numbers greatl}^ enlarge it is 
more difficult to maintain a high per cent of 
growth, yet, if the present inadequate force 
can show a ten per cent advance on a member- 
ship of 24057655^^ certainly a multiplication 
of our forces and expenditures by eight may 
be relied upon to increase the annual average 
to twelve and one-half per cent. In the early 
half of the generation it would doubtless be 
much in advance of that ratio ; later it might 
fall below it. But even this average increase 
of our foreign membership until the year 
1940 would give us in foreign lands between 

25 Methodist Year Book, 1906, p. 3d. 

26 Ibid. 

132 



How? 

fourteen and fifteen million members and 
probationers, to sa.y nothing of the millions 
of baptized children. It would constitute a 
Church five times as numerous as our present 
American membership. With children and 
adherents, it would represent a Christian com- 
munity of at least thirty millions, or one-fifth 
of the one hundred and fifty millions which 
we estimate as our foreign missionary re- 
sponsibility. 

The Boer War cost Great Britain one and 
one-quarter billion dollars in two years. By 
spending this enormous sum, a nation of 
432,631 Boers^" were overcome and their 
country annexed to the British Empire. The 
conqueror expended nearly three thousand 
dollars for every foe he subdued. According 
to our estimate, the entire cost of transform- 
ing this portion of the moral and spiritual 
wilderness of darkest Asia, Africa, and South 
America would be about four hundred and 
twelve million dollars, or one-third of the 
m.oney spent in South Africa. Every new 

27 Statesman's Year Book, 1907, pp. 238 and 252. 

133 



The Cost of Christian Conquest 

subject added to Christ's kingdom would rep- 
resent an expenditure of less than thirty dol- 
larsj — -just one per cent of the per capita cost 
of making these unwilling British subjects. 
Add to this the millions who will receive their 
coronation in the higher kingdom during the 
generation; put down the multitudes of chil- 
dren of Christian parents; and, above all, 
reckon In that which baffles the . statistician, 
"the pervading with the spirit of the gospel" 
of these ten times fifteen million Christless 
souls, — our brothers. Will it pay? The 
Queen sent more than two hundred thousand 
soldiers to South Africa,^^ of whom tens of 
thousands died a violent or untimely death 
on field or in hospital. Our conquest calls 
for a force of only six thousand men and 
women, and possibly an additional four thou- 
sand during the generation to fill vacancies 
from every cause. Ten thousand to win fif- 
teen millions ! "One shall chase a thousand," 
with five hundred more for "gospel measure." 

28 Times' History of the War in South Africa, Vol. I 
p. 2. 

184 



How ? 

There seems to be no reasonable doubt that 
no other Kne of philanthropic service offers 
to the disciple of Christ anything like such 
sure and large returns for the outlay of 
money and labor as the Christian conquest 
of the Christless nations. 



135 



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